Genesis of EdenNorth Korea Revives Nuclear Weapons Programme? Aug 98
NEW YORK - United States intelligence agencies have detected a large secret underground complex in North Korea that they believe is the centrepiede of an effort to revive the country's frozen nuclear weapons programme, the New York Times reported yesterday. The Times said that the finding has alarmed officials at the White House and the Pentagon. They fear the complex may represent an effort to break a four-year-old agreement in which North Korea pledged to give up its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for billions of dollars in aid. The North has said in recent months that the United States is reneging on its side of the agreement because Congress has failed to authorise tens of millions of dollars in fuel shipments for the North. The shipments are the American contribution to a $US6 billion programme under which South Korea, Japan and other nations are supposed to finance a major electric energy programme as a quid pro quo for the North's abandonment of its ambitions to develop nuclear arms. A senior Administration official said the North had not yet technically violated that accord because there was no evidence that Pyongyang had begun pouring cement for a new reactor or. a reprocessing plant that would convert nuclear waste into bomb-grade plutonium. But spy satellites have photographed a large work site 401an northeast of Yongbyon, the nuclear centre where, until the 1994 accord, the North is believed to have created enough plutonium to build six or more bombs.
Thousands of North Korean workers are swarming around the site, American officials said. Other intelligence, which the officials would not describe, led the Administration in recent weeks to wam members of Congress and the South Korean Government in classified briefings that they believed the North intended to buud a new reactor and reprocessing centre at the site. If Congress refused to fulfil the American commitment the officials feared, that would give the North an excuse to abandon the nuclear agreement officially and, perhaps, to expel inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who are at Yongbyon. The North has prohibited inspectors from examining other sites outside Yongbyon. At a meeting this week between North Korean officials and the American special envoy for Korean nuclear issues, the United States will be expected to demand the North stop all work at the new site. Reuters
N Korean, famine dead as many as 2.4m
BEIJING - Up to 2.4 million people may have died in three years of famine in North Korea to malnourished teenagers are neraly half the height they should be a United States Congress research team warned yesterday. "Reliable sources estimate that of North Korea's 23 million people, between 300,000 and 8000,000 in all, died each year [for the past three years] as a result of famine said Mark Kirk, a staff member of the US House of Representatives International Relations Commitee. The group has just returned to China from a week-long mission in North Korea. "In the city of Hyesan near the Chinese border we saw 15 and 26- year-old students less than half-the height of a comparable United States child because they have suffered long-term malnutrition."' Widely distributed 'alternative food" made out of pond weed, grasses and corn husks is failing-to provide sufficient nutrition in the hunger-stricken nation, he said, and gave the example of an 11-year old girl in Huichon city hospital who weighed only 15kg. North Korea has suffered years of severe natural dissasters which compounded difficculties brought about by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Death toll estimates from those escaping into China and exiled Korean groups put the figure' far higher than 2.4 million over the three years. The team is heading to the Chinese side of the North Korean border today to speak to refugees fleeing from the North. Mr Kirk said: "We would like to get to speak to some North Korens without having North Korean minders around us all the time. AFP
N Korean, famine dead as many as 2.4m
BEIJING - Up to 2.4 million people may have died in three years of famine in North Korea to malnourished teenagers are neraly half the height they should be a United States Congress research team warned yesterday. "Reliable sources estimate that of North Korea's 23 million people, between 300,000 and 8000,000 in all, died each year [for the past three years] as a result of famine said Mark Kirk, a staff member of the US House of Representatives International Relations Commitee. The group has just returned to China from a week-long mission in North Korea. "In the city of Hyesan near the Chinese border we saw 15 and 26- year-old students less than half-the height of a comparable United States child because they have suffered long-term malnutrition."' Widely distributed 'alternative food" made out of pond weed, grasses and corn husks is failing-to provide sufficient nutrition in the hunger-stricken nation, he said, and gave the example of an 11-year old girl in Huichon city hospital who weighed only 15kg. North Korea has suffered years of severe natural dissasters which compounded difficculties brought about by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Death toll estimates from those escaping into China and exiled Korean groups put the figure' far higher than 2.4 million over the three years. The team is heading to the Chinese side of the North Korean border today to speak to refugees fleeing from the North. Mr Kirk said: "We would like to get to speak to some North Korens without having North Korean minders around us all the time. AFP