Jitters over US-N Korea talks

Jitters over US-N Korea talks

The fuel rods could be used to make nuclear bombs

Talks over North Korea's nuclear programme appear to be back on track after confusion about a statement apparently saying Pyongyang had started reprocessing thousands of spent fuel rods.

The United States has said an English-language statement from North Korea's foreign ministry might have been mistranslated to say it had already started reprocessing 8,000 nuclear rods.

A later translation by US analysts, taken from a Korean-language statement, said Pyongyang was on the verge of reprocessing, not that the work had begun.

The US, North Korea and China are due to hold talks in Beijing next week to try to end the six-month standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

Reprocessing of the spent fuel rods could enable North Korea to extract the weapons-grade plutonium needed to manufacture nuclear bombs.

Delicate diplomacy

It would be major escalation of the dispute, which was sparked last October when the US said North Korea had admitted to a secret nuclear programme.

After Pyongyang's statement which sparked the confusion on Friday, the US said it was consulting China, Japan and South Korea before deciding whether to go ahead with the meeting, which is scheduled to start on Wednesday.

South Korea and Japan have called for the talks to go ahead as planned.

Neither country is included in the talks - the first to involve both Washington and Pyongyang since the impasse began.

North Korea had been demanding direct talks with Washington only, but signalled last week it was prepared to accept Washington's demand for multilateral discussions, by agreeing to a compromise deal which included just China.

In a separate development, North Korea on Saturday proposed the resumption of direct talks with South Korea at cabinet level in Pyongyang later this month.

A South Korean unification ministry spokesman said Seoul would "positively consider accepting".

North Korea has suspended a number of recent meetings in protest at Seoul's decision to send non-combat troops to help the US-led war against Iraq.

BBC Seoul correspondent Caroline Gluck says that by proposing the resumption of inter-Korean talks at a delicate time, the North may be trying to create a split between the South and its closest ally, the US.

'Serious matter'

US state department spokesman Richard Boucher warned that any move by North Korea to begin nuclear reprocessing would be regarded as "an extremely serious matter".

Officials in Seoul said they had no intelligence that showed the communist state had begun such a process.

The North Korean statement, originally released in English by state-run news agency KCNA, said: "We are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase."

But US analysts who monitored the statement on a Korean-language report broadcast in Pyongyang, came up with a different translation.

In that version the statement said: "We are successfully completing the final phase to the point of the reprocessing operation for some 8,000 spent fuel rods."