N Korea 'boosts nuclear arsenal'

North Korea says diplomacy over its nuclear programme has failed

North Korea has said it has finished reprocessing 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, enough to make up to six nuclear bombs.

A senior North Korean official also said that the communist state was in possession of a nuclear deterrent and was continuing to strengthen it.

Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon told the Chinese news agency Xinhua in New York that Pyongyang had no choice because the United States had threatened it with nuclear weapons.

It is the first time Pyongyang has made such an explicit claim in public - even though it has not been independently confirmed.

In a first reaction, a South Korean foreign ministry official said the remarks seemed to be aimed "at increasing North Korea's negotiating power" in the continuing stand-off with the United States and its allies over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

The fuel rods were stored at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, which was shut down under an agreement with the US in 1994 but has recently been restarted.

As part of it, North Korea successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods N Korean foreign ministry Full N Korean statement

Reprocessing the rods would allow North Korea to separate plutonium from them. This could then be used to make nuclear weapons relatively quickly.

American intelligence has long estimated that North Korea has one or two atom bombs.

Officials say intelligence agencies have been unable to confirm how far North Korea has got but they concede reprocessing could have taken place at secret locations that would be hard to monitor.

North Korea hinted privately earlier this year that it had started reprocessing the rods, though the US and South Korean intelligence agencies said the claims could have been bluster.

No uranium plans

Mr Choe's public comments were repeated in a statement from the North Korean foreign ministry, carried by Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency.

The statement said that North Korea had reprocessed the fuel rods as part of the reactivation of its nuclear facilities for "peaceful purposes", but added that since relations with the US deteriorated, it had "changed the purpose" of the rods.

North Korea "made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction [of] increasing its nuclear deterrent force", the statement said.

It added that even more reprocessed spent fuel rods would be "churned out in an unbroken chain... without delay when we deem it necessary".

But Mr Choe told Xinhua that the North had no intention of transferring nuclear weapons technology to other countries.

He also reportedly told the agency that North Korea has "no plan with regard to uranium enrichment". Uranium is another possible ingredient of nuclear weapons, and last year the US said that Pyongyang had admitted to a secret uranium-enriching programme.

North Korea has said it needs a nuclear deterrent because it believes it could be the next target of US military action.

But the US appears to be opting for regional pressure to rein in the North's nuclear ambitions.

The North denies it has agreed to hold a second round.

But despite this, South Korea and the US said on Wednesday that they expected further negotiations with the North to take place in due course.

The last round of multinational talks on the North Korean impasse were held in Beijing in August.

The six-nation meeting - involving the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia - ended inconclusively.