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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap12-10-204127.asp?reg=pacrim&vts=121020042055<http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap12-10-204127.asp?reg=pacrim&vts=121020042055>

 

Expert: Washington exaggerated intelligence on North Korea's uranium threat

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 10 - The U.S. government exaggerated the threat from 
North Korea's nuclear programs, just as it manipulated intelligence about 
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a U.S. foreign policy expert said in an 
article published Friday.

 

     Selig Harrison wrote in the Dec. 17 issue of Foreign Affairs that the 
Bush administration claimed <>Pyongyang was on its way to producing 
weapons-grade uranium to scare allies Japan and South Korea into a tougher 
stance on the communist nation. Bush has labeled North Korea part of an 
''axis of evil'' with Iran and prewar Iraq. 


       But by failing to distinguish between civilian and military 
uranium-enrichment capabilities, Washington greatly complicated the already 
complex efforts to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, 
Harrison wrote. 


       ''Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a 
worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its 
intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating 
the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons,'' 
he said. 


       Harrison is director of the Asia Program and chairman of the Task 
Force on U.S.-Korea Policy at the Washington-based Center for International 
Policy. 


       In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli dismissed 
the article's claims. 


       ''We think there is a wealth of clear and compelling evidence about 
North Korea's uranium enrichment program,'' he said. ''We have known since 
the late 1990s that North Korea was interested in enrichment technology.'' 


       He said the United States obtained evidence more than 2½ years ago 
that North Korea was pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium and assessed 
it was aimed at making nuclear weapons. 


       North Korea's weapons capabilities remain a mystery. Some analysts and 
observers have said the reclusive communist nation has six to eight atomic 
bombs. 


       Ereli said the United States informed the North Koreans about its 
knowledge of the program in October 2002, and North Korea then acknowledged 
it was pursuing a convert program. 


       The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have held 
three rounds of talks since last year to persuade the North into scrapping 
its suspected nuclear facilities. No breakthroughs have been made. 



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