UN not sure what weapons North Korea has

North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme remains shrouded in mystery because the country has not been open to international inspectors since 1994, the UN nuclear monitoring agency said today.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has been pressing the North Koreans to agree to inspections, but Pyongyang has resisted and experts can only guess at what they are hiding.

"We just don’t know," said spokesman mark Gwozdecky. "We can’t say what might be there now."

North Korea stunned the world last night by revealing to the US that it has a secret nuclear weapons programme in violation of a 1994 agreement.

US officials believe the country has produced enough plutonium for at least one, and maybe two, nuclear weapons. North Korea denies it.

The IAEA, which is charged by the United Nations with keeping tabs on nuclear weapons programmes worldwide, has inspectors in North Korea, but their activities are limited to making sure a single reactor in Nyongbyon is not operational, Gwozdecky said.

"We have not been in except for the continued inspection presence at that one reactor," he said.

Under the nuclear agreement North Korea and the United States signed in Geneva, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for international aid to build two power-producing nuclear reactors.

At the time, North Korea showed IAEA inspectors only about 100 grams of weapons-grade plutonium, Gwozdecky said. Only new inspections will be able to ascertain whether the country has produced substantially more.

“Who knows what they have now?” he said. “We have had essentially nothing from the North Koreans since 1994,” he added. This is when the country withdrew its membership in the IAEA.

The nuclear agency has held technical talks with the North Koreans twice a year over the last few years, but those meetings have not resulted in any serious consideration of inspections.

In September, the IAEA’s general assembly adopted a resolution expressing its “serious concern” over North Korea’s continued refusal to cooperate and verify that its nuclear energy programme meets international safety guidelines.

In January, the agency said even if North Korea agreed to comprehensive inspections and gave its teams full cooperation, it would take three to four years to verify that the country was not hiding nuclear material.