|
Confusion over North Korean cloud grows
Last Updated Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:48:51 EDT
SEOUL - North Korea has taken foreign diplomats to a construction site that it says was the source of a mushroom-shaped cloud that led last week to speculation of a nuclear explosion in the country.
However, the dam construction site in Samsu County that the diplomats visited was 100 kilometres away from Kimhyungjik County, the site of the mushroom-shaped cloud first reported by South Korean media on Sept. 12.
North Korea had said all along it was dynamiting a mountain as part of a big hydro-electric project.
The confusion about goings-on in secretive, totalitarian North Korea was furthered on Friday when the South Korean government said it believed the cloud might not have been caused by an explosion at all.
"We believe that there was no explosion in the place where intelligence authorities had previously suspected that there were signs of an explosion," said Lee Bong-Jo, South Korea's vice-minister for unification.
"We believe that the explosion described by North Korea took place in Samsu County, about 100 kilometres from the originally suspected site, and has to do with a hydroelectric project," Lee added.
North Korea – one of three countries that U.S. President George W. Bush designated members of an "axis of evil" – is believed to have a nuclear weapons program.
Foreign media during the past week jumped on the story of the mysterious cloud, because North Korea has been resisting pressure to re-join international talks about curbing nuclear tensions in the region.
North Korea, however, has claimed South Korea was using the muddled story as a means of distracting from embarrassing recent revelations that its own scientists had produced tiny amounts of enriched uranium.
These revelation had ignited fears that South Korea, too, might again be harbouring nuclear ambitions. In reaction, North Korea said, it was now all the more determined to pursue its nuclear program.
In April, a massive explosion in a northern town near the Chinese border killed more than 100 North Koreans and wounded thousands more. The country took three days to admit anything at all had happened in Ryongchon.
Written by CBC News Online staff
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/natio...more040917.html
|
