Bush concerned about uranium program

U.S. President George W. Bush expressed concern on Monday that North Korea might have a uranium-based nuclear program.

"North Korea is still a problem. There is a debate in the intel community about how big a problem they are. But one of my concerns is that there might be a highly enriched uranium program," Bush said in a final news conference to wrap up his eight years in the White House.

He urged North Korea to agree to a regime to verify its nuclear weapons programs under a multilateral aid-for-denuclearization deal.

"In order to advance our relations with North Korea, the North Korean government must honor the commitments it made, to allow for strong verification measures to be in place to ensure that they don`t develop a highly enriched uranium program, for example," he said.

The outgoing president`s remarks follow a similar concern raised by Vice President Dick Cheney last week that North Korea appears to have a uranium-based nuclear program aside from its plutonium-producing reactor, which is being disabled under the six-party talks that include the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Cheney said that "it looks like they have a continuing, ongoing program to produce highly enriched uranium, in addition to what they were doing in Yongbyon at their plutonium reactor."

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley also touched on the same issue days earlier, saying, "Some in the intelligence community have increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program."

Bush and his aides were apparently addressing criticism that the six-party deal has a major loophole due to the lack of any mechanism to shed light on North Korea`s alleged development of a highly enriched uranium program and suspected proliferation of its nuclear technology to Syria and other countries.

Cheney said last week he is "confident" that North Korea "helped the Syrians build a nuclear reactor, which is a major problem."

Israeli air forces raided a Syrian facility in September last year, and U.S. officials described the facility as a nuclear reactor being built with help from North Korea.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has not yet provided any report supporting that claim following an on-site inspection later in the year.

U.S. chief nuclear envoy Christopher Hill signed what critics say was an incomplete deal in May last year to salvage the six-party talks amid reports that Bush was trying to make North Korea its sole foreign policy achievement to compensate for the failures in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

In October, Bush also lifted the North from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism based on the North`s verbal agreement that it will allow international inspectors to take samples from its nuclear reactor. The agreement was made when Hill visited Pyongyang.

In the latest round of the six-party talks last month, North Korea, however, refused to sign a verification regime that includes sampling, saying it will agree to it in the third and final phase of the denuclearization deal.

North Korea is now in the second phase, during which it is supposed to disable its nuclear facilities in return for 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or the equivalent in energy aid.

The third and last phase calls for the North to dismantle all its nuclear facilities and programs in exchange for massive economic aid and diplomatic recognition by the United States and Japan.

The uranium and proliferation issues have hardly been discussed in public by Bush and other administration officials in recent months as Cheney and other hard-liners were apparently sidelined on the North Korean nuclear issue while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Hill took the initiative.

Bush administration officials have, nonetheless, defended the six-party deal, saying that it stopped the North from producing more plutonium for nuclear warheads.

Critics also say that Bush has been focusing on the North`s nuclear proliferation rather than on the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that North Korea has built several nuclear bombs, and U.S. intelligence and defense reports having categorized the North as a nuclear weapons state in recent weeks.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has also said the North has eight nuclear weapons, pledging to continue the six-party nuclear talks while seeking more direct bilateral engagement, such as a possible summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.



From news reports