NKorea says it is testing uranium enrichment process
Updated
Claims from North Korea that it is in the 'final stages' in tests to enrich uranium have raised concerns across the region.
If true, the claims mean North Korea is on track to gaining another means to make a nuclear bomb. It comes after an apparent thaw in relations with the West, but this latest claim could see North Korea revert back to a standoff with the United States over its nuclear weapons program.
Presenter:David Chen
Speaker: Peter Hayes, Director of the Nautilus Institute in San Franciso; Rory Medcalf, international security analyst from Australia's Lowy Institute
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CHEN: While the veracity of North Korea's latest claims are still being debated, the message it's trying to send isn't as mixed.
The announcement that the North has successfully completed an experiment in enriching uranium, is an attempt to put pressure on the US says North Korea expert Peter Hayes.
HAYES: They have announced that their going to go down this second track and its a way I think of politically putting pressure on the US to deal with it.
CHEN: It comes after recent gestures of goodwill from the North Koreans. They released the two detained US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee and recently resumed family reunions with South Korea.
But Rory Medcalf, international security analyst says the apparent thaw in relations is only temporary.
MEDCALF: We've just been going through a phase of apparent cooperation, now we're moving back into a more confrontational phase again as we had a few months ago, with the nuclear tests and the missile tests....the reason North Korea adopts this on and off strategy, this very frustrating strategy is that this slows down progress in negotiations, it slows down international efforts to constrain and limit its bomb program and it's an attempt to divide the countries of the region.
CHEN: Professor Hayes, Director of the Nautilus Institute in San Francisco agrees.
HAYES: The way I interpret it this is, the North Koreans have set up the United States for a fall. In other words, they of course found the journalist to be extremely irritating and really somewhat of a distraction from their game. But once they had them, they had to figure out what to do with them and I think by releasing the journalist, by releasing the fisherman to South Korea etc. they have attempted to show their credentials to China and to say look, the Americans are not responding in kind, which indeed they have not been in any meaningful way, and therefore we need to escalate.
CHEN: He says North Korea may escalate the situation on the Korean Penisula soon.
HAYES; My own guess is there is a more than 50 per cent chance that they will conduct a nuclear test before the end of the year.
CHEN: But if North Korea's claims are true, it will represent a significant step in North Korea's nuclear research.
It could provide Pyongyang with a second source of weapons grade bomb making material. The first being its plutonium reactor in Yongbyon.
But as Professor Hayes points out the the North Koreans don't seem be in a hurry to develop more nuclear weapons.
HAYES: There is no evidence according to satellite photos that they are actually rebuilding that disabled facility, which means that if they are not busily getting ready to make more plutonium, which they could do much faster than in richer uranium, all of which tells us that what we've really got is probably a small inventory of plutonium bombs which are more about sending threat message and that they are rather relaxed about the actual number of nuclear weapons that they have.
CHEN: But even if North Korea is intent on developing a bomb using uranium, it is still years away ...
Rory Medcalf from Australia's Lowy Institute says North Korea is far from mastering the technology needed to produce weapons grade uranium.
MEDCALF: The challenge is that the centrifuge technology is very tricky. It takes years to master and it would be simpler for North Korea to keep pursuing the plutonium option.
CHEN: But Professor Hayes warns that if Iran becomes involved North Korea's ambition to have a viable nuclear weapon could be achieved much sooner.
HAYES: My own sense is that the most likely nuclear alliance that could emerge to put even more pressure on the United States would be a North Korean-Iranian alliance where the North Koreans would offer to provide you the Iranians not so much with the material, but rather test data which is actually extremely valuable and rather difficult to stop the transferrals and in return of course the Iranians it is now well known have pretty much established themselves as having uranium enrichment technology and having solved all the problems in that technology. So they can save the North Koreans a great deal of time.
CHEN: The idea of a nuclear-armed North may in the end be a reality the United States has to come to terms with.
But then again the moves may be just political posturing. North Korea has told the United Nations it's not only prepared for sanctions, but dialogue too.
For now, no one outside Pyongyang will know what North Korea plans to do next, until the move is made.
