North warns of nuclear war on Korean peninsula

NORTH KOREA’S communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making programme in defiance of new UN sanctions.

The North’s defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks tomorrow with his South Korean counterpart on the North’s missile and nuclear programmes.

South Korean president Lee Myung-bak told security-related ministers during an unscheduled meeting yesterday to “resolutely and squarely” cope with the North’s latest threat, his office said. Lee is to leave for the US this morning.

A commentary yesterday in the North’s main state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, claimed the US has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another commentary published Saturday in the state-run Tongil Sinbo weekly claimed the US has been deploying a vast amount of nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan.

North Korea “is completely within the range of US nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of a nuclear war are the highest in the world,” the Tongil Sinbo commentary said.

Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman at the US military command in Seoul, called the latest accusation “baseless”, saying Washington has no nuclear bombs in South Korea. US tactical nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea in 1991 as part of arms reductions following the Cold War.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry issued a statement yesterday demanding the North stop stoking tension, abandon its nuclear weapons and return to dialogue with the South. On Saturday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry threatened war on any country that dared to stop its ships on the high seas under the new sanctions approved by the UN Security Council on Friday as punishment for the North’s latest nuclear test.

It is not clear if the statements are simply rhetorical. Still, they are a huge setback for international attempts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions following its second nuclear test on May 25. It first tested a nuclear device in 2006.

In Saturday’s statement, North Korea said it has been enriching uranium to provide fuel for its light-water reactor. It was the first public acknowledgment the North is running a uranium enrichment programme in addition to its known plutonium-based programme. The two radioactive materials are key ingredients in making atomic bombs.

Yesterday, Yonhap news agency reported South Korea and the US have mobilised spy satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and human intelligence networks to obtain evidence that the North has been running a uranium enrichment programme.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said it could not confirm the report. The National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s main spy agency, was not available for comment.