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Be open about nukes - Rice
23/09/2007 21:10 - (SA)
New York - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday it was "very important" for North Korea to be fully transparent about its nuclear weapons programme amid reports it has atomic links with Syria.
"There are frankly a lot of questions that remain to be answered and we want to be able to answer questions about all aspects of the North Korean nuclear programme," she told reporters.
She was talking ahead of a crucial round of six-party talks among the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas beginning on Wednesday in Beijing.
The talks are aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
Rice did not cite the reported North Korean-Syrian links. If true, they could cast a dark cloud over US policy towards North Korea, which US President George W Bush - weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq - has hailed as a success. Secret military site
US and British newspapers have reported recently that North Korea was secretly helping Syria to develop a nuclear weapons facility.
Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported that elite Israeli forces seized North Korean nuclear material during a raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israeli warplanes bombed it September 6.
Quoting well-placed sources, it said the commandos seized the material from a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in northern Syria and added that tests of it in Israel showed it was of North Korean origin.
Reports in the New York Times and Washington Post have also made similar claims based on intelligence information supposedly from Israel.
North Korea has denied the claims and insists it is keeping an earlier pledge not to allow the transfer of nuclear materials.
- AFP
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