N Korea nuclear test confirmed

N Korea nuclear test confirmed
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington, David Pilling in Tokyo and Anna Fifield in Seoul
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: October 16 2006 11:35 | Last updated: October 16 2006 19:24



The US confirmed on Monday that North Korea last week conducted a nuclear explosion, making the Stalinist nation the eighth country to join the so-called nuclear club.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence said air samples collected after the October 9 explosion in North Korea confirmed that Pyongyang had conducted an underground nuclear explosion with a sub-kiloton yield.

North Korea joins the US, Russia, France, Britain, China – which are members of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – India and Pakistan as countries that are known to have tested nuclear weapons. Israel is also believed to possess nuclear arms.

The confirmation means that the stalled six-party talks aimed at resolving nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula will now have to focus on nuclear disarmament as opposed to stopping North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Separately on Monday, Thomas Schieffer, US ambassador to Japan, said a resumption of six-party talks would not be sufficient to justify ending sanctions against North Korea. “A return to six-party talks kind of doesn’t do it,” Mr Schieffer told reporters, referring to the discussions that collapsed a year ago involving China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, as well as North Korea and the US.

Instead, the international community was demanding “the ability to verify that the North Koreans were indeed giving up their nuclear weapons programme”, he said. “Then I think you would see a walking back from the sanctions regime. But there’s a long way to go before that.”

Mr Schieffer conceded that China and South Korea came to the North Korean issue with “different agendas” from Japan and the US, which are seen as taking a harder line. However, he said sticking to the six-party format increased the chance that they would speak with one voice and prevent Pyongyang from trying to divide them.

Analysts are sceptical about whether the US remains committed to the six-party framework, arguing that Washington is uncomfortable operating in a forum with such diverse opinions.

On Beijing’s appetite to impose punitive and lengthy sanctions, Mr Schieffer said: “The Chinese have been very helpful in this process at the UN. You have to take them at their word. They voted for the resolution, which contemplates sanctions.”

North Korea must be made aware that it could still “back away from the abyss”, he said. The US would be prepared to offer some kind of “regime guarantee” in return for assurances that Pyongyang was giving up its weapons programme.

The ambassador said the US remained open to direct contact from Pyongyang through a variety of informal channels. “If North Korea wanted to deliver a message to us that they were prepared to forego nuclear weapons, there are a lot of places they could do that. We answer the phone in many parts of the world, but it hasn’t been ringing,” he said.

Mr Schieffer said he did not believe there was a strong move in Japan to “go nuclear” in response to the North Korean threat despite weekend calls from a senior politician to open a discussion on the subject.

Yasuhisa Shiozaki, chief cabinet secretary, said Japan had no plans to change its ban on nuclear weapons. Mr Schieffer said that, as long as Japan believed the US remained prepared to “trade New York for Tokyo”, an independent nuclear deterrent would not make it any safer. “This is not a new situation for Japan. We have been here for 50 years.”

Australia said it would go beyond the UN resolution by banning North Korean ships from entering its ports.


Additional reporting by Virginia Marsh in Sydney