U.S. says it does not recognize N. Korea as nuclear power

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (Yonhap) -- The United States said Tuesday it does not
recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, disavowing its own recent
military assessment.

"As a matter of policy, we do not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state,"
Stewart Upton, spokesman for the Department of Defense, said in a statement.
"What was contained in a recent Joint Forces Command report does not reflect
official U.S. government policy regarding the status of North Korea."
The report, titled Joint Operating Environment (JOE) 2008: Challenges and
Implications for the Future Joint Force, described North Korea as one of five
Asian nuclear powers, along with China, India, Pakistan and Russia, saying,
"North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon and has produced sufficient fissile
material to create more such weapons."
The spokesman said that the report "is not meant to be a statement of policy and
specifically states on the second page that the report is speculative in nature
and is only intended to serve as a starting point for discussions about the
future security environment."
"We have formally communicated this clarification to the Embassy of the Republic
of Korea," he said. The Republic of Korea is South Korea's official name.
The Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is responsible for
transforming the U.S. military to meet future threats through education and
experimentation.
Joseph Nye Jr., a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University, meanwhile, told Yonhap News Agency that he understands that North
Korea "had a partial nuclear explosion" and that the U.S. government has not yet
accepted the North as a nuclear state.
"There is no desire to tolerate North Korea as a nuclear weapons state and our
foreign policy objective is to roll back North Korea's nuclear program and
denuclearize North Korea," said Nye, formerly assistant secretary of defense
under the Clinton administration.
North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in October 2006 and claimed the
test was a success. Debate continues, however, among experts and policymakers
over whether the detonation should in fact be seen as a success due to its low
yield.
President-elect Barack Obama said while on the campaign trail that the North has
eight nuclear weapons, without elaborating.
U.S. and South Korean intelligence authorities have said the North has enough
plutonium to produce several nuclear warheads, but have yet to officially confirm
Pyongyang already possesses a specific number.
The outgoing Bush administration has not acknowledged North Korea as a nuclear
weapons state amid ongoing multilateral talks on ending North Korea's atomic
weapons development.
The chief nuclear envoys of the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia are
meeting in Beijing for a third consecutive day Wednesday to agree on a
verification regime on the nuclear list presented by the North in June, the
latest hurdle to the difficult multilateral nuclear talks that date back to 2003.
Also at issue is whether the North will allow access to its suspected
uranium-based nuclear site, aside from its main plutonium-producing reactor in
Yongbyon, and will address concerns over its alleged proliferation of nuclear
technology to Syria.
Pyongyang recently said it will only allow visits to its main Yongbyon reactor,
interviews with scientists, and viewing of related documents, rebuffing the U.S.
claim that the North had agreed on taking samples from its nuclear facilities and
visits to undeclared sites on mutual consent.
The nuclear talks are scheduled to end Wednesday as envoys express pessimism in
the waning weeks of the Bush administration, said to be seeking an agreement in
one way or another as its sole diplomatic trophy.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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