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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's foreign ministry insisted on Saturday that its nuclear proliferation case was closed, a day after the disgraced architect of its atomic program claimed the army under President Pervez Musharraf helped spread the technology. Abdul Qadeer Khan said on Friday that Pakistan's army supervised a 2000 shipment of used P-1 centrifuges to North Korea. It must have been sent with the approval of Musharraf, the then-army chief who took power in a 1999 coup, Khan alleged. "It was a North Korean plane, and the army had complete knowledge about it and the equipment," Khan said. "It must have gone...

Pakistan's Military Knew Of Nuclear Technology Transfer To N Korea, Says Scientist 7/4/2008 2:52 PM ET Abdul Qadir Khan, who is considered to be the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, said on Friday that the country's former military regime was aware of the transfer of nuclear technology to North Korea. AQ Khan told media on Friday that the Pakistani army, which was headed by President Pervez Musharraf then, was aware of the technology transfer as the uranium enrichment equipment was dispatched onboard a North Korean plane under the supervision of Pakistani army officials in 2000. Khan's statements on Friday contradicts...

(SEOUL) — Han Chang-kweon is skeptical when he hears that his homeland is taking steps to get rid of its nuclear weapons. Born in North Korea in 1961, he escaped from a communist logging camp in his early 30s, lived in Uzbekistan, and sought asylum in the United States before moving to Seoul in 2005. He said North Korea’s nuclear weapons are its only bargaining chip, and the country can’t survive without them. "What they are doing now is nothing but a show. They will never give up their nuclear programs — they simply can’t, at least for as long...

The communists were watching intently. One wore a rough, green military uniform with a cut-off collar. He had a large, moon-like face and an inscrutable expression. The other, who had a flint-like look in his eye, was in a slick grey suit. It's not often you wake on a train to find a pair of communists sitting cross-legged an arm's length away and staring at you. But that, I soon discovered, is par for the course in North Korea. Both men, like almost everyone else I would meet in the country, sported red circular badges depicting North Korea's founding father,...

‘Centrifuges sent to North Korea with Musharraf’s consent’ * AQ Khan says army knew of shipment * Presidency slams ‘false statement’ ISLAMABAD: North Korea received centrifuges from Pakistan in a 2000 shipment supervised by the army during the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, Dr AQ Khan said on Friday. Khan told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the uranium enrichment equipment was sent from Pakistan in a North Korean plane that was loaded under the supervision of Pakistani security officials. Khan said the army had “complete knowledge” of the shipment of used P-1 centrifuges to North Korea and...

US has means to verify North Korea statement -Rice (Adds amount of plutonium, other details) By Susan Cornwell KYOTO, Japan, June 26 (Reuters) - The United States believes it has the means to verify North Korea's estimate of its nuclear programmes, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday. North Korea was expected to declare between 30-50 kg (66-110 lb) of plutonium in the document, given to the Chinese government on Thursday, a senior U.S. administration official said separately, but added that "our estimates are greater". Verification, which meant calculating and resolving differences in estimates, could take "months and...

USFK commander takes war cue from Iraq By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Sunday, June 29, 2007 CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — The top U.S. military commander in South Korea plans steps to ensure U.S. forces are ready to counter any Iraq-style insurgency tactics that North Korea might try to use in a conflict on the peninsula. In a brief interview with Stars and Stripes on Friday, U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Walter Sharp said he thinks it’s likely North Korea has been keeping close watch on the tactics used by insurgents in Iraq and would no doubt...

George W. Bush's presidency seems exhausted and irrelevant, but that's a dangerous illusion. The Decider remains in command of the world's most advanced and powerful military force, and he has just a few months to tie up what he might consider loose ends -- a thought that is sobering enough to send Amy Winehouse to rehab. We can only hope he considers his "denuclearization" agreement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il a sufficient legacy. Assuming the deal keeps North Korea from making more nuclear weapons, Bush will be 1-for-3 in dealing with his Axis of Evil. (If you ignore...

June 30, 2008: The South Korea government is beginning to realize why there is such a vigorous anti-U.S., pro-North Korea movement in a country that was devastated by a North Korean invasion 58 years ago. The reason is that most (OK, 51 percent) of South Korean teenagers know little about the Korean War (1950-53). After all, this was their grand-parents, or great-grand-parents war. The reason for the ignorance is the education system, dominated by leftists who have, over the decades, played down the unprovoked and savage North Korean invasion in 1950. The South Korean Communist Party was outlawed in 1946,...

President Bush is fond of comparing himself to Ronald Reagan but his nuclear deal with North Korea is more like something out of Jimmy Carter’s playbook. The deal relies on trusting the notoriously unreliable North Koreans who get economic goodies while the US pretends the former member of the “axis of evil” is no longer a terror sponsor. Until 2006, President Bush was tough -- as President Reagan had been -- refusing to negotiate with North Korea until the regime agreed to take concrete steps to dismantle its nuclear programs. He rightly accused Pyongyang of violating a previous diplomatic accord...

Is George W. Bush a reckless cowboy? Or is he a legacy-seeking sellout willing sign off on any deal, even a bad one, that allows him to claim a diplomatic achievement? The guess here is neither, at least in reality, but the media consensus is either or both. When President Bush announced on Thursday that North Korea had agreed to offer a declaration concerning its nuclear activities, and further had agreed to destroy its nuclear reactor tower at Yongbyon, it was one of the most carefully worded, qualified announcements Bush has ever made. At no point did he entertain the...

With much fanfare and choreography, but little substance, the administration has accepted a North Korean "declaration" about its nuclear program that is narrowly limited, incomplete and almost certainly dishonest in material respects. In exchange, President Bush personally declared that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States. In a final flourish, North Korea has undertaken a reverse Potemkin Village act, destroying the antiquated cooling tower of the antiquated Yongbyon reactor. In the waning days of American presidencies, this theater is the stuff of legacy.

Vice President Dick Cheney fought furiously to block efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to strike a controversial US compromise deal with North Korea over the communist state's nuclear programme, the Telegraph has learned. "The exchanges between Cheney's office and Rice's people at State got very testy. But ultimately Condi had the President's ear and persuaded him that his legacy would be stronger if they reached a deal with Pyongyang," said a Pentagon adviser briefed on the battle. Mr Cheney's office is believed to have played a key role in the release two months ago of documents and photographs...

(CNSNews.com) - The Bush administration's decision to ease trade sanctions on North Korea and start a 45-day process of removing Pyongyang from a list of terror-sponsors has drawn fire from conservatives and praise from quarters usually critical of the president's foreign policies. The decision also fueled a long running debate in Japan, where many feel the move is premature. The announcement that North Korea will be removed from the terrorism list and that sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act will be lifted followed the regime's handover of a written declaration -- six months overdue -- of its plutonium-based...

It now turns out that the options the U.S. had been contemplating were designed not to punish North Korean duplicity but to encourage it. So it is that, despite its recent collaboration with Hezbollah-sponsor Syria – to say nothing of its intent, in the run-up the Iraq war, to sell $10 million worth of medium-range missiles to Saddam Hussein for use against coalition troops – North Korea no longer will be designated a terrorist state. Never mind that the country has yet to come clean about its nuclear program. In the eyes of the Bush administration, North Korea has been...

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President George W. Bush Thursday formally abandoned the last vestiges of a once-robust policy towards a North Korean regime he had rightly said he “loathed.” Worse yet, he is doing so in the face of Pyongyang’s manifest contempt exhibited through, among other things, its serial refusal even to provide promised data about the status and disposition of its nuclear arsenal, let alone to eliminate it. Consider the following egregious shortfalls in the “declaration” supplied by Kim Jong Il’s representatives to the United States via Communist China: The North Korean declaration was delivered six months late. As time dragged on without...

What the phrase Axis of Evil lacked in subtlety it made up for in accuracy. Later allegations notwithstanding, in January 2002 when George W. Bush homed in on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in his State of the Union Address, no one believed that the U.S. had fabricated any evidence against these countries. The infamous coinage has since has dwarfed the President's elaboration on the Axis, which is worth reviewing. Bush's exact words were "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction,...

YOU KNOW THE BUSH administration’s North Korea policy is fatally flawed when even Barack Obama, last heard pledging to meet with the world’s dictators “without preconditions,” judges it naïve. And yet, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded all too sensible yesterday when he suggested that the Bush administration’s baffling decision to strike Pyongyang from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring states and to lift trade sanctions against the tyrannical regime

North Korea prepares to destroy nuclear reactor PYONGYANG, North Korea (CNN) -- A day after releasing details of its long-secret nuclear program, North Korea on Friday plans to destroy a highly visible tower at a facility where officials now acknowledge they extracted plutonium to build nuclear weapons. Workers remove fuel rods on the reactor floor at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility this year. The massive implosion at the Yongbyon facility is intended to be a powerful public symbol of a move to end nuclear activities by the Communist nation once branded a member of an "axis of evil" by U.S....

North Korea handed over details of its nuclear programmes Thursday, paving the way for its removal from the US terrorism blacklist amid years of efforts to persuade the North to abandon the atom bomb.Six months behind schedule, officials delivered the dossier to China -- the host country for the six-nation talks since 2003 that have worked to entice the North to exchange nuclear weapons for aid and diplomatic concessions.The declaration of the secretive nation's nuclear materials, facilities and programmes was not expected to include a list of its actual atomic weapons, which would come in a later phase of the...

The U.S. has just persuaded the most isolated tyranny on Earth to disable a plutonium plant and turn over nearly 19,000 pages of nuclear documents. Would Obama do better?Barack Obama has done a lot of talking in his campaign about the merits of "tough diplomacy," as he likes to put it, "the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use." In that vein, Obama has belittled Asia's U.S.-led six-party talks between North Korea, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, calling them an "ad hoc arrangement." As an alternative, "Obama is willing to meet with the...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

(CNSNews.com) - "We will trust you only to the extent that you fulfill your promises," President Bush warned North Korea on Thursday. The president announced at the White House that in response to North Korea meeting a key deadline to declare its nuclear activities, the United States will lift some trade sanctions against the communist state and rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror. North Korea handed over a long-awaited declaration of its nuclear programs to Chinese officials on Thursday. President Bush noted that North Korea has begun disabling its nuclear facility at Yongbyon; and on Thursday,...

North Korean Nuclear: important announcement at 09H00 GMT, according to Beijing BEIJING - China has informed Thursday that an "important announcement" would be made during a press conference in Beijing at 09H00 GMT on the nuclear issue of North Korean. "There will be a press conference at 17H00 (09H00 GMT) with an important announcement," said the spokesman of Chinese Foreign Ministry Liu Jianchao. Asked about the nature of this announcement, he said it was an "important news about the six-party talks", adding that he was "not in a position to give details." North Korea has promised to surrender Thursday...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is expected this week to turn over its long-delayed accounting of its nuclear weapons activities, part of a chain of events leading to a unique photo opportunity: the destruction of the cooling tower at Pyongyang's main reactor. One item that won't make the declaration, which the White House says is due Thursday, will be North Korea's nuclear bombs. The omission means the world will have to wait for an answer to the question at the heart of the nearly six-year-old standoff: Is the North ready to give up its nuclear weapons?

World to witness blasting of NKorean cooling tower: officials Sun Jun 22, 6:23 AM ET North Korea has invited five media organisations from foreign countries to cover live the blowing-up of a cooling tower at its main nuclear site, officials said Sunday. The invited organisations -- one each from North Korea's five negotiating partners at six-party disarmament talks -- include US news channel CNN, Seoul's top nuclear envoy Kim Sook said. The United Sates, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have been in talks with North Korea to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. "Five news organisations -- one each from...

Bush Administration to Ask Congress on Thursday to REMOVE North Korea from TERROR WATCH LIST...

Obama offers change Kim Jong-Il can believe in North Korea prefers Democratic candidate Barack Obama over Republican John McCain, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan said. The communist country, which has survived a relatively hawkish Bush administration, considers McCain "a variant of Bush" and "nothing better than a scarecrow of neoconservatives," according to the Choson Sinbo, a newspaper run by ethnic Koreans in Japan. The organization of Koreans, called Chongryon, has served as Pyongyang's de facto embassy in Japan, which has no diplomatic ties with North Korea.

"I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with," Vice President Cheney reportedly declared in a White House meeting on North Korea in December 2003. "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." Cheney's call to battle resounded last week as the Bush administration slammed former president Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas, the extremist Palestinian group that now runs the Gaza Strip, and began to have its own second thoughts about closing a new nuclear deal with North Korea. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain also chimed...

North Korean missile engineers during a secret visit to Syria in mid-November discussed loading chemical warheads on ballistic missiles, the Sankei Shimbun reports from Washington. Quoting an unnamed source familiar with the political situation in the Middle East, the Japanese daily said cooperation in chemical weapons was evidence of close collaboration in the development of weapons of mass destruction between the two countries. The source claimed North Korean ground-to-ground missile engineers are helping Syria install chemical warheads on missiles. He added the North Korea-Syria discussions were apparently aimed at resuming missile tests after an explosion occurred during a test on...

The discovery of designs for a compact nuclear bomb has raised fears that Iran and North Korea might have obtained blueprints enabling them to mount long-range strikes with nuclear-armed missiles. Designs for a nuclear device small enough to fit on a ballistic missile were found on computers linked to the international smuggling ring that supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, a top US expert says.

(AP / WASHINGTON) — An international smuggling ring may have secretly shared blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon with Iran, North Korea and other rogue countries, The Washington Post reported Sunday The smuggling ring was led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

It's All About Rice Cookers 2008-06-03 Never mind that state media still demonize anything marginally capitalist. In North Korea, nothing shouts "status" like a smuggled kitchen appliance. RFA photo Cuckoo rice cooker, Seoul. SEOUL—In tightly closed, pathologically secretive North Korea, nothing says “status” in 2008 like a smuggled South Korean rice cooker. And it seems even cadres in one of the world's last bastions of communism have developed a preference for high-end brands. The most popular rice cooker in affluent, arch-rival South Korea is the Cuckoo, a Korean homonym for the sound of steam escaping from a pressure valve...

/begin my summaryN. Korea Sent Nuclear Technicians to Iran"Technicians and Specialists from N. Korea's Yongbyun Facilities sent to Iran" N. Korea sent nuclear technicians to Iran in order to support its nuclear development, according to Japan's Sankei Shimbun on June 13th. Quoting a credible source on Korean Peninsula, it reported, "(N. Korea) conducts nuclear development project with Iran, not just with Syria." They are technicians from Yongbyun nuclear facilities and specialists from National Defense Institute. National Defense Institute is also called the Second Natural Science Institute, and said to be responsible for N. Korea's nuclear weapon's development. The source did...

Pyongyang, June 10 (KCNA) -- The DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on June 10. The statement says: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK is authorized by its government to state as follows: Frequent terrorist acts being perpetrated in different parts of the world seriously threaten human lives, social stability and international peace and security. The international community is becoming increasingly vocal, expressing indignation at these acts and denouncing them and calling for closer cooperation among countries in the struggle against terrorism. The DPRK government has consistently maintained the stand to resolutely oppose all forms of...

North Korea is refusing to proceed further with its nuclear disarmament unless other countries at arms talks guarantee promised energy aid, a South Korean official said Thursday. Seeking to break the latest stalemate at the nuclear negotiations, the five other countries in the arms talks - the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - met with the North on Wednesday in the truce village of Panmunjom in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas. "The North has taken the position that if that (energy aid) is not fully guaranteed, it cannot cooperate in making further steps" at...

The news that Kim Ok (44), Kim Jong Il's fourth wife, has started an preparatory work to nominate Kim Jong Il's third son Jong Woon (24) as successor has been generating interest. Yonhap News cited several North Korean sources, reporting on the 1st, "Kim Ok reportedly has accelerated the preparatory work to nominate the third son Jong Woon as a successor with the assistance of Lee Jeh Gang, the First Vice Director of the Workers’ Party Guidance Department, who is a close acquaintance." The sources gave the following analysis, "Kim Ok, who is in her mid-40s, probably has the concern...

North Korea reiterates anti-terror policy in apparent bid for removal from US blacklist AP - 2 hours 14 minutes ago SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has reiterated its opposition to terrorism and nuclear proliferation in an apparent attempt to bolster its bid for removal from a U.S. blacklist. The North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country "will firmly maintain its consistent stand of opposing all forms of terrorism." The ministry also said the North will take part in international efforts to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorists' hands. The U.S. has pledged to...

Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department's top Korea expert, crossed into North Korea via the heavily fortified land border with South Korea, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said. Kim was to stay in North Korea for two days to discuss how it can finish several remaining steps in disabling its Yongbyong reactor as well the possibility of blowing up a cooling tower there, according to the State Department and the embassy. North Korea has promised to provide a complete declaration of its nuclear programs in return for aid and political concessions, but has not yet done so. It handed 18,500...

Soldier Missing In Action From Korean War Is Identified The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Sgt. 1st Class W.T. Akins, U.S. Army, of Decatur, Ga. He will be buried on June 26 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Requesting prayer for the family, friends, and loved ones of Sgt. 1st Class W.T. Akins, U.S. Army, of Decatur, Ga.. Representatives from the Army met...

For the last four years, China has been holding an increasing number of exercises to test their ability to come to the aid of North Korea, in the event of a war with South Korea (and the United States). On in the event of a collapse of the North Korean government. More Chinese ground units have been moved to areas just across the Yalu river from North Korea (and many of the troops set to work guarding the border against the growing number of desperate North Koreans trying to get out.) There have also been exercises with engineers practicing erecting...

FOOD shortages are gripping North Korea and there are signs some of its citizens may be starving to death, experts and rights activists say. Food rations across much of North Korea have been slashed, and the country's 1.1million-strong military reportedly stopped major exercises so soldiers could help raise crops, according to reports out of South Korea. After a three-year hiatus, the Bush administration is resuming food supplies to North Korea, The Australian reports. A US freighter carrying bulk grain is sailing to make the first delivery of about 500,000 tonnes of food that Washington promised last month to the Kim...

INTERVIEW-N.Korean methamphetamines flood Philippines 30 May 2008 09:39:07 GMT Source: Reuters By Manny Mogato MANILA, May 30 (Reuters) - High-grade methamphetamines from North Korea have started to flood the Philippines, reducing street prices of the drug by about 50 percent, the head of the country's drug enforcement agency said on Friday. Dionisio Santiago, a retired general, told Reuters there was strong suspicion a huge shipment of methamphetamines seized at the former U.S. navy base of Subic north of Manila this week came from clandestine drugs laboratories in North Korea. "We've been informed by our counterparts abroad that North Korea has...

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment -- a route to making a nuclear weapon -- to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well. The assertion is based on conversations that the author, Shyam Bhatia, had with Bhutto in 2003, in which she said she would tell him a secret "so significant that I had to promise never to reveal it, at least not during her lifetime," Bhatia writes in "Goodbye,...

"What I said was I would meet with our adversaries, including Iran, including Venezuela, including Cuba, including North Korea, without preconditions, but that does not mean without preparation," Barack Obama told ABC News' Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday. Continues...============================================================ The shoe that keeps on fitting I thought Barack Hussein Obama would be easier to beat than Hillary, then Obama opened his mouth and removed all doubt. Obama's name appears nowhere in Bush's speech before the Israeli Knesset last week, but solely on the basis that Bush was denouncing appeasement and cowardice, Obama concluded Bush was talking about him! But...

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein spoke with John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, for the May 23 edition of "National Journal On Air." This is a transcript of their conversation. Q: John Bolton -- former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, former undersecretary of State, now a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a supporter of Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Mr. Bolton, welcome to "National Journal On Air." Bolton: Glad to be here. Q: Mr. Bolton, Senator McCain has been extremely critical of Barack Obama over the past week for saying that he would meet...

Pyongyang, May 20 (KCNA) -- The U.S. and south Korean warmongers are staging joint military exercises, while separately escalating the war maneuvers. This comes under fire by a signed commentary of Minju Joson Tuesday. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the U.S. and south Korean war-thirsty forces' frantic war exercises to invade the DPRK, the commentary says, and goes on: What merits attention is that the moves of the U.S. and south Korean bellicose forces to provoke a war against the DPRK have become evermore pronounced since Lee Myung Bak...

The United States has reached a deal with North Korea to provide 500,000 tons of food aid over the coming year to the isolated communist nation. The U.S. administration says the aid has little to do with its nuclear disarmament deal with Pyongyang, although both have involved an unusual intensity of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea, a nation President George W. Bush once included as part of a rhetorical ``axis of evil.'' ``We don't see any connection,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted as saying. ``We're doing this because America is a compassionate nation and the United States and...