 | | McConnell said US intelligence remains concerned about North Korea |
North Korea remains a nuclear proliferation risk and is probably still pursuing a uranium enrichment capacity, a US intelligence report has said.
Presenting the US intelligence community's annual threat assessment to congress on Tuesday, Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, said he had "moderate confidence" that the North was still pursuing uranium enrichment, as it had in the past.
The report to Congress also noted that North Korea had produced enough plutonium for at least half a dozen weapons, adding that the North's sales of missiles to Iran and several countries in the Middle East underscored the risk of proliferation. "We remain concerned North Korea could proliferate nuclear weapons abroad," the report said. McConnell noted in the report that Pyongyang had missed an end of 2007 deadline for making a full declaration of its nuclear programme in exchange for aid and political concessions. He said the US remains "uncertain about Kim Jong-Il's commitment to full denuclearisation, as he promised in the six-party agreement", referring to the North's leader and the six-nation nuclear talks. "While Pyongyang denies a program of uranium enrichment and they deny their proliferation activities, we believe North Korea continues to engage in both," McConnell said. Nuclear capabilities The critical comments come at an impasse in the talks involving the US, the Koreas, Japan, China and Russia. The US has refused to consider removing North Korea from its terrorism blacklist until Pyongyang hands over the promised declaration of all its nuclear activities. The US assessment however also suggested that Pyongyang probably saw its missile and nuclear capabilities "as being more for deterrence and coercive diplomacy than for warfighting" to be considered for use only under "certain narrow circumstances." "We also assess that Pyongyang probably would not attempt to use nuclear weapons against US forces or territory unless it perceived the regime to be on the verge of military defeat and risked an irretrievable loss of control." The report said a North Korean nuclear test in October 2006 supported previous US assessments that Pyongyang has produced nuclear weapons even though it was of a low yield. North Korea says it had already presented a complete list of its nuclear programmes last November but the US said it was not a "complete and correct" list.
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