A senior Japanese official said yesterday that the government was greatly disappointed by North Korea's announcement that it had finished reprocessing 8,000 nuclear fuel rods into weapon-grade plutonium, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Nov. 4).
"If that is a fact, I cannot help but say that [it] is extremely regrettable because that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano.
He added that "we cannot tolerate North Korea possessing nuclear (capabilities)"
The North said the spent nuclear fuel rods were reprocessed at the formerly shuttered Yongbyon nuclear site. The plutonium reprocessing plant had been closed as part of an agreement the country negotiated with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Officials in Seoul have indicated recently that the facility appears to be operational again, as threatened by Pyongyang (Kyodo News I/Breitbart.com, Nov. 4).
Under the new coalition government of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, Tokyo intends to appoint a new head delegate to the moribund six-nation talks, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
An announcement on the replacement for Akitaka Saiki could come next week, a diplomatic source said.
Saik, who has served in the position since January of last year,is expected to"be promoted to the post overseeing the Japanese Foreign Ministry's policy coordination," the source said (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency I, Nov. 4).
Meanwhile, a group of experts from the United States is expected to travel later this month to North Korea, where they will talk with government officials associated with the country's nuclear operations Kyodo reported today.
Korea Economic Institute President Charles Pritchard and the Asia Foundation Center for U.S.-Korea Policy Director Scott Snyder are expected in the North from Nov. 21-24, a high-level diplomatic source told Yonhap.
A separate diplomatic source said he believed that Snyder, Pritchard and another researcher from the Korea Economic Institute would be meeting with Pyongyang officials in a nonofficial capacity (Kyodo News II/Breitbart.com, Nov. 5).
A former State Department adviser on Korean issues warned yesterday that international attempts to pressure the North into giving up its nuclear program through sanctions could lead the isolated state to become an even greater proliferator.
"The logic of the current policy of international sanctions is to increase the pressure on North Korea and force it to return to cooperating with the international community, Balbina Hwang, now a Georgetown University professor, told Yonhap.
"But the problem is that by limiting North Korea's access to legitimate means of earning hard currency, we may actually be increasing the very behavior we are trying to prevent: proliferation," she added.
The North has been under increased U.N. Security Council sanctions since May after it infuriated the international community by conducting a second nuclear test (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency II, Nov. 4).