US denies claims about defection bid

WASHINGTON - The United States has denied reports that it offered incentives to the Pacific island of Nauru to prompt it to help organise the defections of 20 members of North Korea's military and scientific elite.

In fact, the State Department refused to confirm or deny whether the defections actually took place.

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The report in the Weekend Australian which said the United States helped to set up and pay for an embassy in Beijing for Nauru was 'great reading but untrue' and 'patently false', State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Monday.

'We did not pay for the establishment of any Nauru diplomatic missions, we never promised to provide financial assistance to Nauru or requested their cooperation in any other sphere to enable Nauru to avoid the imposition of financial sanctions against them under the USA Patriot Act,' he said.

The Weekend Australian had said Washington offered to help the nation avoid being designated as a 'prime money-laundering concern' under the legislation.

The report said the defections, dubbed Operation Weasel, began in October after 11 countries agreed to provide consular protection to smuggle North Koreans from China to safe havens. -- AFP


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[Oceans11]

Nuclear scientists 'defect' as North Korea defies America
From Elaine Monaghan in Washington


NORTH KOREA has apparently thrown down the gauntlet in its nuclear standoff with the United States by claiming that it was reprocessing more than 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that could be used to make atomic bombs.
The country’s Foreign Ministry said that the American-led war in Iraq had taught Pyongyang “it was necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent force”.

“As we have already declared, we are successfully completing the final phase to the point of the reprocessing operation for some 8,000 spent fuel rods, as we sent interim information to the US and other countries concerned early in March after resuming our nuclear activities from last December,” a ministry spokesman said American officials were baffled by the claim and suggested that North Korea’s message might have been lost in translation. It was impossible to tell from the original Korean text whether Pyongyang had already started reprocessing or was merely about to do so.

“Frankly, it’s not clear exactly what it means. There’s some imprecision in the language,” Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, said.He added: “We would regard processing of spent fuel to extract plutonium as an extremely serious matter.”

The ambiguous North Korean announcement came as a report in The Australian disclosed that up to 20 of North Korea's military and scientific elite, among them key nuclear specialists, had defected to the US and its allies through a smuggling operation involving the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru. An American source confirmed to The Times last night that discussions with Nauru about helping North Korean defectors had taken place.

The defections started last October and were made possible with the help of 11 countries that agreed to provide consular protection to smuggle the targets from neighbouring China. Among those believed to be in a safe house in the West is the father of North Korea's nuclear programme, Kyong Won-ha. Debriefings of Mr Kyong are said to have given intelligence officials an unprecedented insight into North Korea's nuclear capabilities, particularly at the Reactor No 1 in the city of Yongbyon.

The current nuclear crisis erupted in October when US officials said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme in violation of its international agreements.

President Bush made North Korea a member of his “axis of evil” states in his 2002 State of the Union address. Critics said his speech sent North Korea’s regime into a state of even greater paranoia.

America insisted for months that it would not hold bilateral talks with North Korea. However, a breakthrough came last week when China said it would host the talks that are now threatened.