SEOUL – South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak said Saturday that North Korea’s new enriched uranium program should be dealt with by the United Nations Security Council, his spokeswoman said.
“The issue of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program should be referred to the United Nations Security Council,” Lee was quoted as saying when he met with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara.
South Korea’s foreign minister Kim Sung-Hwan said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency published Thursday that the programme was designed to make nuclear weapons, rebutting Pyongyang’s claims that it is for peaceful use.
“I absolutely agree,” Maehara was quoted as telling Lee.
The North, which is already nuclear-armed, heightened regional security fears last November by revealing an apparently operational uranium enrichment plant to visiting US experts.
Pyongyang says the plant will fuel an experimental light water reactor now under construction to generate electricity.
But senior US and other officials fear it could easily be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium to augment the country’s existing plutonium stockpile.
The North quit six-party nuclear disarmament talks in April 2009 and conducted its second atomic weapons test a month later in protest at what it perceives as a hostile US policy towards it.
