Envoy set to visit site of North Korean blast

Britain’s ambassador to North Korea plans to travel tomorrow to the site of an explosion that shot a mushroom cloud into the sky to verify claims it was caused by planned blasting for a hydroelectric project.

Ambassador David Slinn said the trip had been delayed by the difficulty of arranging travel to the remote area in the country’s north-east.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry “has worked hard and co-operated well on putting it together”, Mr Slinn said in the capital, Pyongyang.

“It’s in an isolated part of the country,” he said. “It requires a plane ride and a two-to-three hour trip” in an off-road vehicle.

The ambassador said he would be joined by diplomats from the Pyongyang embassies of Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, India and Mongolia.

Experts from the United States and elsewhere say they do not believe the September 9 blast near the Chinese border was a nuclear test. But a Bush administration official said the United States has indications the North is trying to conduct one.

Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell, who visited Pyongyang this week, said the North’s foreign minister had told him the blast was part of demolition work for a hydroelectric project and was not a nuclear explosion.

North Korea denounced the speculation over a possible nuclear test as part of a “preposterous smear campaign” aimed at diverting world attention away from revelations about past South Korean nuclear activities.