N.Korean claims contradict pledges: US

WASHINGTON – NORTH Korean claims to have built a uranium enrichment plant contradict Pyongyang’s obligations, the White House said on Monday, as it left the door ajar for ‘serious’ negotiations.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs refused to divulge intelligence details but said that Pyongyang’s ‘claims, if true, contradict their pledges and commitments they have made repeatedly to the international community’.

Mr Gibbs spoke as shock from North Korea’s claims to have a working uranium enrichment facility reverberated around the world, and caused particular concern for US allies Japan and South Korea, as the US envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth made a regional tour.

Despite the furore over reports first carried by the New York Times, the White House left open the door for negotiations under the six-party framework with Pyongyang, but said any talks must be substantive and serious.

‘The administration believes the six-party process can play an important role if and when the North Koreans take that six-party process to move toward denuclearisation seriously,’ Mr Gibbs said. ‘We do not wish to talk simply for the sake of talking. The North Koreans have to be serious about living up to their obligations.’

North Korea abandoned six-nation disarmament talks, involving Japan, South Korea, Russia and China, and staged a second atomic weapons test in 2009, having amassed enough plutonium for possibly six to eight small bombs. — AFP