North Korea says it's ready to produce nuclear weapons
Meanwhile a July 15, 2003 article at The Straits Times website had a headline that read:
No proof of N. Korea's nuclear claim: Seoul
And finally a July 15, 2003 article at the Philly.com has a headline that reads:
CIA: Assessment of Syria's WMD exaggerated
So, the next time you hear somebody from the USGov talking about how NKorea or Syria has WMD, remember Iraq... the USGov said they had WMD and they're still looking for 'em!
From StarTribune.com:
From The Straits Times:North Korea says it's ready to produce nuclear weapons
David E. Sanger, New York Times
Published July 15, 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- North Korean officials told the Bush administration last week that they had finished producing enough plutonium to create at least six nuclear devices and that they intended to move ahead quickly to turn the material into weapons, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.
The new declaration set off a scramble inside U.S. intelligence agencies -- under fire for their assessment of Iraq's nuclear capability -- to determine whether the government of Kim Jong-il is bluffing or had actually succeeded in producing the material without being detected.
Officials said Monday that the answer is unclear. A preliminary set of atmospheric tests for the presence of a gas given off as nuclear waste is reprocessed into plutonium is the best indicator the United States has to work with from one of the world's most closed nations. The most recent tests suggested that nuclear work has accelerated, but the results were inconclusive. More test results are expected at the end of this week.
North Korea had said in April that it was working to convert its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. Several months ago, U.S. spy satellites recorded the rods being hauled away from a storage shed, although it is unclear where they were taken.
North Korea's latest declaration, if true, would pose a direct challenge to President Bush, who said two months ago that a nuclear-armed North Korea "will not be tolerated."
Bush will be faced with difficult choices. He decided it was too risky to take military action against the North's main nuclear reprocessing plant, at Yongbyon, even before the reprocessing started. Now, though, the Pentagon may be asked to revisit the military options that Bush has always said are a last resort.
But the president must also decide whether to negotiate with the North -- under its implicit nuclear threat -- or hold fast to his insistence that any talks must include the entire region and that nuclear blackmail would be met with increasingly harsh sanctions.
Intelligence agencies have scant evidence that the North is actually building a nuclear weapon, officials said. As recently as two weeks ago, U.S. intelligence officials told South Korea and Japan that they they believed that, at most, only a few hundred of the rods had been converted into weapons-usable material. Then they warned that North Korea was experimenting with the conventional explosives that are needed to ignite a nuclear explosion -- further evidence of its intent to produce weapons. The CIA believes the North may have produced two weapons in the early 1990s, but the evidence is in dispute.
The North's latest declaration came July 8 in New York, during an unannounced meeting between North Korean diplomats at the United Nations and Jack Pritchard, a state department official who handles North Korea issues.
The North Korean diplomats read a statement from Pyongyang declaring that the reprocessing of the rods had been completed on June 30.
The North Korean officials then said that weapons production was beginning. "They didn't say how long it would take, and they didn't threaten to sell anything," said one senior official.
Some see last week's declaration as a negotiating ploy, but other officials believe that the Kim government has simply decided that it can make Washington and its Asian neighbors accept the North as a new nuclear power.© Copyright 2003 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com:No proof of N. Korea's nuclear claim: Seoul
Pyongyang's claim that it has finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to make nuclear arms cannot be confirmed
SEOUL - South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young Kwan said yesterday that Seoul and Washington had no direct evidence to confirm that North Korea had finished reprocessing spent fuel rods to make nuclear weapons.
'There has been no scientific data and evidence,' Mr Yoon told a domestic radio programme.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Sunday that North Korea had told the United States it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to extract plutonium for nuclear weapons.
United Nations-based North Korean envoys confirmed at talks with US officials last week in New York that the reprocessing was completed on June 30, the agency said.
It quoted Mr Chang Sung Min, a former South Korean ruling party lawmaker, as saying that the informal meeting was attended by North Korea's UN representative Park Gil Yon and US State Department official Jack Pritchard.
Mr Yoon confirmed the New York meeting but refused to elaborate and expressed doubt over Pyongyang's reported claim.
'South Korea and the United States have until now failed to secure evidence despite efforts through various channels,' he said.
Presidential adviser for foreign policy Ban Ki Moon said Seoul was trying to get an exact assessment of the situation.
'We don't have the evidence yet to confirm that North Korea has finished the reprocessing phase as it claims,' he said.
In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NBC News on Sunday that it was unclear whether North Korea's claim was true.
'Some people believe what they are saying, other people don't believe what they are saying,' he said.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Donald Keyser, on a three-day visit to Seoul since Sunday, met Mr Ban yesterday to discuss the North Korean nuclear crisis, officials said.
Mr Keyser also briefed senior Seoul officials on efforts to curb North Korea's alleged trafficking in drugs and counterfeit money in an attempt to put pressure on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
On Saturday, Japan's Kyodo news agency said the White House had received fresh intelligence that the spent fuel rods were being reprocessed at the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang.
Krypton 85 has been detected in air samples from Yongbyon's vicinity, according to Kyodo. Krypton 85 is released into the atmosphere when spent fuel rods are reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.
China yesterday called for calm and urged all sides to avoid worsening the crisis.
'We hope the relevant sides can exercise restraint, resolve mutual concerns through dialogue,' the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. -- AFP, Reuters(c)2003 Singapore Press Holdings
CIA: Assessment of Syria's WMD exaggerated
By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - In a new dispute over interpreting intelligence data, the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria's weapons of mass destruction that was to be presented Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
After the objections, the planned testimony by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, a leading administration hawk, was delayed until September.
U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.
Syria has come under increasing U.S. pressure during and after the Iraq war for allegedly giving refuge to members of Saddam Hussein's regime, allowing foreign fighters to cross into Iraq to attack U.S. troops and for backing Palestinian militant groups that were conducting terrorist strikes on Israel. After Saddam's government fell, some Bush aides hinted that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus might be the next U.S. target.
The objections by the intelligence community come as the Bush administration is defending itself over complaints that it embellished intelligence secrets to justify the war against Iraq.
Bolton's planned remarks caused a "revolt" among intelligence experts who thought they inflated the progress Syria has made in its weapons programs, said a U.S. official who isn't from the CIA, but was involved in the dispute.
He and other officials who provided similar accounts spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity and because they aren't authorized government spokesmen.
The CIA's objections and comments alone ran to 35 to 40 pages, the official said.
Officials declined to provide more details of the disputes over the testimony, some of which was secret and scheduled to be delivered in closed session. The House panel is considering a bill that would toughen trade and diplomatic sanctions against Syria, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.
Officials provided conflicting explanations of why the hearing was canceled.
A Bolton aide said it was because of a scheduling conflict - Bolton was called to a White House meeting Tuesday afternoon - and that the hearing had been reset for September. Others said it was because the bitter dispute couldn't be immediately resolved.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the issue.
But other officials in the executive branch and on Capitol Hill said the White House Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates government officials' public statements, wouldn't give final approval to the planned testimony.
The conflict appears to illustrate how battles over prewar intelligence on Iraq have spread to other issues and have heightened sensitivity among Bush aides about public descriptions of threats to the United States.
The White House acknowledged last week that it shouldn't have included in President Bush's January State of the Union address a dramatic contention that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in Africa. Other administration claims about Iraq's banned weapons program and alleged ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network are now in question.
Several officials said another reason for the cancellation of Bolton's testimony was that he might have been subjected to sharp questioning about Iraq intelligence, a controversy the White House is trying to lay to rest.
There is more attention to "dotting I's and crossing T's," said a State Department official, adding that Bolton's draft statement was the subject of "extensive edits."
Bolton set off a controversy in May 2002 when he asserted in a speech that Cuba has a biological warfare program. A State Department intelligence expert, Christian Westermann, recently told a closed-door Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that available intelligence data don't support that assertion, U.S. officials have said.
The first U.S. official said that after months of complaining about pressure to skew their analyses, rank-and-file intelligence officials "have become emboldened" by the recent public debate over Iraq.
"People are fed up," he said.
Another official confirmed that the CIA had "a good deal of concern" over the classified portion of Bolton's testimony.
In speeches and congressional testimony over the past year, Bolton has identified Syria among a handful of countries whose alleged pursuit of biological and chemical weapons makes them threats to international stability. His assessments attached more gravity to the danger that Syria poses than did a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment that covered the first six months of 2002.
In testimony in June before the House International Relations Committee, Bolton said U.S. officials are "looking at Syria's nuclear program with growing concern and continue to monitor it for any signs of nuclear weapons intent."
A CIA report submitted to Congress in April contained more cautionary language. Noting that Syria and Russia have reached preliminary agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation, the CIA report said only, "In principal, broader access to Russian expertise provides opportunities for Syria to expand its indigenous capabilities, should it decide to pursue nuclear weapons."
In his June testimony, Bolton asserted that U.S. officials "know that Syria is pursuing the development of biological weapons." The CIA report said only that it's "highly probable that Syria is also continuing to develop an offensive BW (biological weapons) capability."
Finally, Bolton told the congressional committee that "North Korean entities have been involved in aiding Syria's ballistic missile development." The CIA reported that Syria was trying to build Scud-C ballistic missiles "probably with North Korean assistance."
CIA Director George Tenet, in an annual worldwide assessment of threats against the United States that he presented to Congress in February, referred to Syria by name only once, and that was in connection with its support for Palestinian extremist groups.
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