www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_7_15.html#A11FCA7F

Members of a delegation of European Union lawmakers who completed a visit to North Korea yesterday said they had doubts about U.S. allegations that Pyongyang is actively pursuing uranium enrichment activities in addition to the plutonium-based facilities it has acknowledged operating, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, July 14). www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005/7/
14/ac3b8a26-6ced-4235-a10e-0ecff75d7356.html

British lawmaker Glyn Ford said that “essentially, indications seem to be that North Korea has blueprints for a HEU program … but in order to have a serious HEU program, you are talking about 3,000 gas centrifuges, and you need power supply of quality and quantity, and we have no evidence that they have it.”

North Korean leaders also told the EU officials they did not want Japan to attend the next round of six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, scheduled for later this month.

“They don’t want Japan in the talks at all,” said the leader of the nine-member delegation, Ursula Stenzel of Austria. ”They said that’s no use” (Agence France-Presse/ChannelNewsAsia.com, July 15). www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/print/158058/1/.html

North Korea wants to address the issue of the alleged presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan during the talks, Yonhap reported today.

Pyongyang “wants the denuclearization issue in a broader context, which means not only them, but nuclear presence in … South Korea because they are under a nuclear umbrella from the United States,” Stenzel quoted North Korean officials as saying.

Official U.S. policy is to neither confirm nor deny the presence of its nuclear weapons in other countries, Kyodo reported. Seoul, however, has maintained that it has no atomic bombs on its territory (Kyodo, July 15).

Demands for a stringent inspections regime must be part of negotiations with North Korea at the outset, a nuclear expert told Congress yesterday.

“Verification must be integrated right from the beginning in the negotiation process,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

“Robust verification needs to start immediately when the agreement is implemented,” Albright said, adding that a lack of intrusive verification was a primary reason for the collapse of the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which North Korea promised the Clinton administration an end to its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear energy reactors (Reuters, July 14). today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID
=234511+14-Jul-2005+RTRS&srch=korea+and+nuclear

The Bush administration, meanwhile, is sponsoring a conference on North Korean human rights abuses Tuesday, just one week before the next round of multilateral talks is scheduled to begin, USA Today reported.

Pyongyang “might raise hell” about the event, possibly even damaging the atmosphere at the negotiations, said Kenneth Quinones, a former State Department intelligence expert on North Korea.

Arrangements for the conference were under way before Pyongyang announced its intention to resume talks, according to USA Today (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, July 15). www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-07-15-korea-rights_x.htm

North Korean leaders also told the visiting European Parliament delegation that Pyongyang plans to apply to the World Trade Organization for observer status, Reuters reported.

“North Korea says it has been in contact with the WTO secretariat about observer status,” said Glyn Ford, a British lawmaker. ”Iraq also applied, so if one horse can get through the door, maybe two can” (Anna Fifield, Financial Times, July 15). news.ft.com/cms/s/ad75bdb6-f50b-11d9-8ffc-00000e2511c8.html