SEOUL, (Reuters) – The top U.S. envoy to North Korea today said revelations that Pyongyang had made rapid advances in enriching uranium were the latest in a series of provocations over the past 20 years, but denied it was a crisis.
“It is the latest in a series of provocative moves by the DPRK … it is a very difficult problem we have been struggling to deal with for 20 years,” said Stephen Bosworth, referring to the North by its acronym.
“This is not a crisis, we are not surprised,” he told reporters in Seoul after meeting South Korean officials in Seoul, on the first leg of a tour of the region’s main power.
“We’ve been watching and analysing the DPRK’s aspirations to produce uranium. (However it is ) not helpful to jointly agreed goals we have subscribed to in terms of peace, prosperity, and stability in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia.”
A U.S. nuclear scientist said at the weekend that North Korean officials had shown him a uranium enrichment plant, with over a thousand centifuges, giving the North a secound route to produce nuclear bombs.
Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University said he had been escorted to a plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex this month where he saw hundreds of centrifuges that North Korea said were operational.
