US detects nuclear activity in North Korea

US intelligence analysts have detected slight “increases of activity” around a North Korean nuclear plant but have made no “hard conclusions” on whether the country is reprocessing nuclear fuel for potential weapons use, US officials said yesterday.

“It’s fair to say the experts have come to no hard conclusions,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.

Another US official said intelligence analysts had detected within the last week “some slight increases of activity” around the Yongbyon plant.

“There was another indicator that briefly suggested that something might be going on, but that indicator stopped happening as well,” the official said, declining to be specific.

“Is there some slight indication that something might be happening? Yes. Is it probable that they have started up entirely? No,” the official said.

North Korea threatened to export its nuclear weapons, make more of them, or conduct tests during three-way talks last month in Beijing with the United States, says a report.

The threats were made by Pyongyang’s negotiator Li Gun during an “aside session” with US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, officials familiar with the closed-door talks told The Washington Times.

“This was clearly a threat,” one official said.

The comments on North Korea’s alleged nuclear export threat could confirm a New York Times report on Sunday that said the US administration had shifted its policy with North Korea, focusing more on stopping it from exporting nuclear material than on halting its weapons programs.

A White House spokesman on Monday denied there was any change in US policy toward Pyongyang. “Our position remains the same, that the United States ... is concerned about North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and transferring nuclear material to others,” Scott McClellan told reporters.

Li, one US official told The Washington Times, said in his meeting with Kelly that North Korea would “export nuclear weapons, add to its current arsenal or test a nuclear device.”

Pyongyang’s decision, the North Korean foreign ministry official reportedly said, depends on how the United States responds to its overtures.

Kelly, the US officials said, rejected the threat as unacceptable as a means to resolve the nuclear crisis.

The Central Intelligence Agency and other US intelligence agencies are conducting a review of the matter, the official said, adding that the CIA had changed its assessment that North Korea has not reprocessed any spent nuclear fuel rods, to one that some reprocessing may have taken place.

Li also told Kelly that North Korea’s nuclear weapons were so large that it would be difficult to dismantle them, according to the US officials quoted by The Washington Times.

At the Beijing talks, North Korea offered to ditch its nuclear and missile programs in return for economic and diplomatic benefits, according to US accounts.

The United States has demanded the verified and irreversible scrapping of North Korea’s nuclear programs as a prelude to substantive talks while the North has asked for security guarantees first.