Monday, October 18, 2004
'Korean nukes made with Pakistani help'
* Pyongyang has plutonium bomb: Japan
TOKYO: North Korea has already completed the development of plutonium-based nuclear weapons with the help of Pakistan, a senior Japanese official is reported to have said in comments published on Sunday.
The remarks by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda are the first time a Japanese official has confirmed North Korea's claim to have manufactured nuclear weapons, the Sankei Shimbun said.
"North Korea is near finalising development of nuclear weapons," Hosoda told a ruling party meeting in the western town of Shimane on Saturday, the Sankei said.
Pyongyang has not finished developing uranium-based nuclear weapons, but has completed the development of a plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped by the United States on Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Hosoda said.
"It is urgent to make North Korea abandon them," Hosoda said, without giving any evidence to back up his claims. Hosoda said North Korea and Pakistan had cooperated in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. "It is disgraceful," he said.
Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly confessed in February to leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said last month the Stalinist state would never dismantle its nuclear weapons unless the United States drops its "hostile policy" towards the country.
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