NORTH KOREA: The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday he would recommend that the Security Council, which has the power to approve economic sanctions, becomes involved in the atomic stand-off with Pyongyang.
"I've already submitted a report to the board saying that North Korea is in non-compliance, so we need to get the board to certify that conclusion," said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, who is also involved in seeking to disarm Iraq.
The North Korean regime, meanwhile, has branded President Bush's state of the union address to Congress on Tuesday as aggression against it. "This policy speech is, in essence, an undisguised declaration of aggression to topple the DPRK (North Korean) system," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in the statement issued in English.
Since last month, North Korea has expelled the UN's nuclear inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, restarted a mothballed nuclear complex capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium and threatened to resume missile tests.
The IAEA's 35-nation board has yet to agree on a date for an emergency session on North Korea, though Dr ElBaradei said he was pushing for February 12th, two days before he updates the council on Iraq.
Dr ElBaradei warned that North Korea could be producing significant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium within six months if reports it had restarted a fuel reprocessing plant were true.
Dr ElBaradei said he had not seen a report in the New York Times citing US intelligence sources about the North Korean nuclear plants, but it was known that Pyongyang intended to relaunch its nuclear facility at Yongbyon.
"Within six months they could produce quite significant amounts of material, plutonium," he said, when asked about the reprocessing plant's capabilities.
"Obviously if they restart their reprocessing plant it's a very serious issue and a matter of grave concern for us all.
"They have been saying, and we have been watching, that they have been doing preparatory work to restart the power reactor and also some preparations to restart the reprocessing plant," he said.
According to the New York Times report, US spy satellites have detected what appear to be trucks moving North Korea's stockpile of 8,000 nuclear fuel rods out of storage. Intelligence analysts have seen activity at the Yongbyon nuclear complex throughout January, the Times said. - (Reuters)