North Korea not proliferating, but not in compliance: Clinton

NUKEWARS

NKorea highlights Iran case after vowing trial for US journalists
North Korea Saturday broadcast a report on the sentencing of a US journalist convicted of spying in Iran, one day after announcing it would put two detained American journalists on trial. It was the first time the North had reported on the case in Iran in which the US reporter was sentenced to an eight-year prison term, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors the communist state's media. Yonhap said the report was carried by the state radio, the Korean Central Broadcasting Station. Pyongyang said Friday the two female US journalists would stand trial on criminal charges, a move seen by some analysts as pressuring Washington to open direct dialogue. "A competent organ of the DPRK (North Korea) concluded the investigation into the journalists of the United States," the official Korean Central News Agency said. "The organ formally decided to refer them to a trial on the basis of the confirmed crimes committed by them." The North had previously said the pair would face trial for "hostile acts" and illegally entering the country. Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, were detained before dawn on March 17 along the narrow Tumen River, which marks the border with China. The pair, who work for Current TV in California, were working on a story about refugees fleeing the hardline communist North. Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders condemned the North's decision, saying the pair face up to 10 years' forced labour if convicted. "We deplore the way the authorities are treating these two women as criminals when in fact they were just doing their job as journalists," the Paris-based group said in a statement. "There is every reason to fear that North Korea's opaque judicial system will not give them due process. But we hope the country's leaders will heed the many calls for their release." The US State Department Friday urged the North to free the pair. "We continue to call on the North Koreans to release the two Americans so they can be returned to their families," spokesman Robert Wood said. "We'll continue to work this issue through diplomatic channels. We're trying to work this quietly ... to do as much as we can."

by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) April 25, 2009
North Korea may not be currently spreading nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon-construction knowledge, but Washington will not let Pyongyang "pretend" that it is in compliance, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News in an interview on Saturday.

"As of right now, we don't have any evidence" of active proliferation, Clinton told Fox in an interview in Baghdad.

"But we don't get satisfied by that. Because we consider North Korea to be a rogue regime that has in the past aided and abetted rogue regimes as well. And one of our highest priorities is to keep nuclear materials out of terrorist networks," Clinton said, according to an advance transcript of the interview.

"And part of the reason we are encouraged by the strong stance we got out of the United Nations, with all of the participants of the six party talks and the recent agreement on very tough sanctions on entities and goods is because we're not going to be blackmailed by the North Koreans," she said.

"We're not going to let them pretend that they are in compliance and then under the table and, you know, behind the back they are continuing to proliferate," she said.

"We're going to crack down in conjunction with the Chinese, the Russians, the Japanese, the South Koreans and other allies to try to you know tighten the band around North Korea so that they cannot do that," Clinton told Fox.

North Korea on Saturday announced that it had started reprocessing spent fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium, just hours after the United Nations slapped sanctions on three North Korean firms accused of backing missile development.

Pyongyang said on April 14 that it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons program after the UN Security Council condemned Pyongyang's controversial April 5 rocket launch.

Megan Mattson, a State Department spokeswoman traveling with Clinton, earlier said that Washington continues "to seek full implementation of the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement under which North Korea committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and return, at an early date, to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA safeguards."

The North had been disabling parts of the Yongbyon nuclear complex as agreed under a February 2007 six-nation deal involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

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NUKEWARS

NKorea says it has reactivated nuclear programme

Seoul (AFP) April 25, 2009
North Korea said Saturday it has started reprocessing spent fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium, in an apparent response to international punishment against its controversial rocket launch.

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