'More nuke tests if talks fail'
2007-04-25 09:13
Washington - North Korea is likely to conduct more nuclear tests if six-nation diplomacy to disarm the communist state does not succeed, the commander of the US military in South Korea told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
"If the six-party talks do not produce a lasting settlement, the North Koreans will likely conduct a second and potentially additional nuclear tests when they see it as serving their purposes," said General BB Bell.
North Korea missed an April 14 deadline to start closing
its Soviet-era nuclear reactor and source of plutonium for
bombs as required by a deal it reached in February with South
Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
That February 13 disarmament deal is languishing amid arguments
over the return of North Korean money once frozen in a Macau
bank account, although the North said last week it remains
committed to the pact and will move once it gets the money.
Bell, who leads the 30 000 US troops stationed in South
Korea to support that American ally's 670 000-strong military,
called North Korea "the key de-stabiliser in Northeast Asia"
with a record of proliferation and threatening actions.
'Strategy of intimidation'
North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in
October, would "continue nuclear weapons research and
development to perpetuate its strategy of intimidation" unless
contained by the six-party talks, Bell said in a prepared
statement for the US Senate armed services committee.
"Without a diplomatic settlement, Pyongyang's plutonium
production capability and its reported HEU (highly enriched
uranium) program places it on track to become a moderate
nuclear power, potentially by the end of the decade," he said.
Bell went on to warn that North Korea's track record of
ballistic missile proliferation meant it "could also decide to
proliferate nuclear weapons technology, expertise or material
to anti-American countries, rogue regimes or non-state actors".