SEOUL – South Korea made a fresh call on Tuesday for the United Nations Security Council to debate North Korea’s uranium enrichment programme, which according to experts could produce more nuclear weapons.
The issue of UN referral will be discussed intensively when US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg visits Seoul on Wednesday, said Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan. He said it would also be raised when Alexei Borodavkin, Russia’s chief negotiator to stalled six-party talks on the North’s nuclear disarmament, visits on Friday.
Talks with the visitors would focus on efforts to create a favourable atmosphere for resumption of the six-party process, Kim told a news conference. “We will continue diplomatic efforts to make North Korea realise the international community’s stern position that it will not tolerate its nuclear development,” he said.
The North last November showed off an apparently functioning uranium enrichment plant to visiting US scientists. It says this is part of a peaceful energy programme. Experts say it could easily be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade uranium, giving the North a second way to make a bomb in addition to an acknowledged plutonium operation.
The UN Security Council ordered the North to scrap all nuclear programmes when it imposed fresh sanctions after the country’s second atomic test in May 2009. Steinberg is visiting South Korea and Japan to brief them on last week’s Washington summit between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao. He will go on to China.
China, the North’s sole major ally, for the first time publicly expressed concern at the uranium enrichment programme in a summit joint statement. Obama and Hu also called for “necessary steps” to restart the six-nation talks which the North abandoned in April 2009.
The North has expressed conditional willingness to return, as China wants. But the United States, South Korea and Japan say Pyongyang must mend ties with Seoul which were strained by a deadly artillery attack last November on a South Korean island.
