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  Date / Time: 9/5/2009 12:08 AM UTC

  North Korea in 'final phase' of uranium enrichment
  

  The claim, delivered in a letter the United Nations, comes after weeks in which Pyongyang made a series of conciliatory gestures; releasing two US journalists and offering to re-start trade and tourism links with South Korea.

  Analysts described the latest move by Pyongyang as part of a high-stakes game of diplomatic cat and mouse in which the near-bankrupt regime of Kim Jong-il alternately cajoles and threatens as it tries to obtain a better deal from the international community.

  “They are taking a mixed strategy, which I would call the sweet and sour approach,” said Peter Beck, research fellow at Stanford University and a specialist on Korean affairs, “This keeps their adversaries guessing and it makes it more difficult to formulate policy.”

  South Korea responded angrily to the North’s statement, which flouted UN economic and arms sanctions imposed earlier this year after Pyongyang conducted illegal tests of a ballistic missile and a second nuclear device.

  “This is intolerable,” the country’s foreign ministry said. “The government will take a stern and consistent response to North Korea's threats and provocations.”

  North Korea, which already has a handful of plutonium nuclear devices, had promised to begin enriching the uranium three months ago after UN Security imposed sanctions on Pyongyang following its second nuclear test in May.

  If successful, it would give North Korea a second way of making nuclear weapons.

  The North’s claim that it’s experimental uranium enrichment had “successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase,” comes amid an increasing diplomatic activity between Pyongyang, Beijing and Washington.

  Stephen Bosworth, the US envoy on North Korea, was in Beijing this week talking to his Chinese counterparts just days after North Korea sent senior representatives to Beijing.

  Mr Bosworth is due to arrive in the South Korean capital, Seoul on Friday afternoon where he was due to meet the country’s nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac, who described the statement as ‘not helpful’ and promised to raise it with Mr Bosworth.

  The US has refused demands from Pyongyang to engage in one-to-one talks, insisting that North Korea must deal through the framework of the repeatedly stalled Six Party nuclear disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia.

  However the letter from Pyongyang’s permanent representative to the United Nations also made clear that North Korea was prepared to talk - if the terms were agreeable.

  “We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions,” the letter said, before warning, “If some permanent members of the UNSC wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue.”

  Analysts say that North Korea is becoming increasingly desperate at its tiny US$17bn economy has been hit hard by the triple-whammy of UN sanctions, a poor harvest and the withdrawal of South Korean food and financial aid which exceeded US$1bn-a-year at its height.

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  • DANGER OF NORTH KORE
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