US says N. Korea 'months away' from nuclear weapons potential

Japan deployed a warship off the Korean peninsula today amid speculation that Pyongyang might be about to test fire a ballistic missile and Washington claimed that North Korea will soon be able to enrich uranium needed for atomic bombs.

Japan deployed a warship off the Korean peninsula today amid speculation that Pyongyang might be about to test fire a ballistic missile and Washington claimed that North Korea will soon be able to enrich uranium needed for atomic bombs.

The US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly warned the North might be months away from being able to produce nuclear weapons using uranium.

Japan's Defense Agency said Thursday it dispatched a destroyer, with top-of-the-line Aegis surveillance capabilities, to the sea between Japan and North Korea last Friday.

The announcement came as Yomiuri, Japan's largest newspaper, said Pyongyang might be preparing to test-fire its Rodong ballistic missile - which has an estimated range of up to 1,500 kilometers (940 miles), making it capable of reaching almost anywhere in Japan.

"We don't have credible information that says whether North Korea is now preparing to launch a ballistic missile," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said of the report, which came just days after Pyongyang test-fired a smaller missile from a warship between Japan and Korea. "But of course, given the situation, we are paying close attention and gathering information."

Defense Agency spokesman Yoshiyuki Ueno described the warship's mission as part of regular patrol activities.

The US Air Force also prepared to resume reconnaissance flights in that area, suspended since communist jets briefly intercepted a US reconnaissance plane 10 days ago, a senior US official said as Washington warned the North was pushing ahead with two nuclear programs - one uranium-based, the other and more advanced, plutonium.

The United States says the plutonium project is already capable of yielding enough weapons-grade material to build six to eight nuclear bombs within months.

In a new warning about the uranium program, Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington "it is only probably a matter of months, and not years, behind the plutonium."

With the dispute dragging on, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan criticized Pyongyang's objections to multilateral talks as "illogical" on Thursday. A day earlier, he urged Washington for more willingness to resolve the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear programs.

"North Korea must come out with a more open stance," Yoon told South Korea's MBC radio.

North Korea insists on direct talks with the United States, but Washington rejects the demand as a ploy to extract more economic concessions.

Yoon said the eventual solution of the nuclear crisis would involve economic aid for the impoverished country, inevitably from Russia, China, Japan and South Korea as well as the United States.

"It's illogical to exclude the potential aid providers from the talks," Yoon said.

Seoul wants the two adversaries to use both direct and multilateral approaches to end the dispute peacefully through dialogue.

In Washington, Kelly said Pyongyang must agree to eliminate its nuclear weapons programs and meet US requirements in five other areas - human rights, terrorism, missile development and export, and conventional forces near South Korea's border - for Washington to fully engage with the communist state.

He added that there is "not the slightest sign" that North Korea would give up its nuclear ambitions.

North Korea said Thursday that Washington's refusal to open direct talks proves that it intends to attack the communist country.

"We want peace, but we will not be forced to disarm and beg for slave-like peace, fearing a war," the North's official Central Radio said, as monitored by the South's Yonhap news agency.

At the United Nations, China has blocked US efforts to reach an agreement among the five permanent Security Council members on a statement that would condemn Pyongyang's decision to pull out of a key nuclear arms-control treaty, diplomats from some of the council member said on conditions of anonymity. Other permanent Council members are Russia, France and Britain.

Meanwhile, Gen. Leon J. Laporte, commander of the 37,000 US forces in South Korea, told the House Armed Services Committee in Washington that additional provocations of US surveillance planes were possible, as well as missile tests and additional steps toward producing nuclear weapons.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of US Pacific Command, told the committee that he saw the probability of war on the Korean Peninsula as "low right now."

The dispute flared in October, when US officials said North Korea admitted having the uranium program. Washington and its allies suspended fuel shipments; the North retaliated by expelling U.N. monitors, withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarting a nuclear reactor.