Kim Jong-il |
North Korea is likely to carry out another nuclear experiment before it sits down on the next-round of multinational nuclear negotiation, a senior U.S. government official said.
Gary Samore, a veteran arms control negotiator in the Clinton administration and now serving as Obama's advisor on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, said in response to a question, posed at a forum Friday, on whether North Korea will carry out an additional nuclear test: "I think they are likely to do it," Yonhap reported Saturday.
This is the first time that an incumbent U.S. official has mentioned such a possibility publicly since Pyongyang carried out its first nuclear detonation test in October 2006.
North Korea Friday said it would conduct a second nuclear test and to test-launch ballistic missiles unless the United Nations Security Council apologizes for condemning its recent rocket launch.
"Unless the U.N. Security Council offers an apology immediately, we will be forced to take additional self-defense measures to protect the highest interests of our republic," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"They will include a nuclear test and ballistic missile tests," the statement said.
"It's very clear that North Korea wants to wage a fight. They want to get ride of the six-party talks," Samore said, adding Pyongyang is also trying to place the other five participating countries of the nuclear talks at odds each other. "We are only waiting," he said.
Samore also said that he believes that relevant countries will support additional sanctions on North Korea if the latter goes ahead with its second nuclear test.
The Security Council had condemned the North's April 5 launch of a long-range rocket and ordered tougher enforcement of existing sanctions.
Pyongyang conducted its first-ever atomic test blast in 2006 and is thought to possess enough plutonium to produce some several nuclear bombs. But experts have said the country is not believed to have mastered the technology to make a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on a missile.
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