US calls on North Korea to come clean on uranium

North Korea did not answer US suspicions of enriching uranium and proliferating technology when it released an inventory of its nuclear plans this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.

Last Thursday, North Korea delivered a long-delayed list of its nuclear activities, as it was required to do in a six-way disarmament-for-aid deal.

The inventory mostly outlined Pyongyang's programme to produce arms-grade plutonium and experts said key questions over suspected uranium enrichment and proliferation remained

"Thus far we don't have the answers we need on either," Rice said in a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan.

North Korea has denied US accusations of proliferating technology to the likes of Syria and having a clandestine programme to enrich uranium for weapons.

"At the end of this, let me just emphasise again, at the end of this we have to have the abandonment of all programmes, weapons and materials," said Rice, who discussed the North with South Korean officials as well as a heated deal to import US beef.

She called on the North to live up to its obligations under the pact it reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

In a symbolic move to show its commitment to the nuclear deal, North Korea toppled the cooling tower at its plutonium-producing reactor last Friday.

In its first reaction since submitting the declaration, North Korea welcomed US moves to drop it from a terrorism blacklist and called on Washington to halt its hostile policy toward it.

But there may be problems ahead with the declaration. Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported an informed source as saying the North declared it produced about 30 kgs of plutonium, while US officials have said they think it is closer to 50 kg.

Officials involved in the nuclear talks are hoping to soon start a new session that will look at verification steps and the scrapping of the North's nuclear weapons programme in exchange for massive aid and an end to its status as a global pariah.

Sung Kim, a State Department envoy who witnessed the cooling tower blast, told reporters in Seoul on Saturday that there may not be enough time to complete the North's denuclearisation before President George W. Bush leaves office in January.

Kim said toppling the tower was a "significant disablement step" that was also an emotional moment for the North Korean nuclear engineers on hand to witness the event. "I detected a sense of sadness when the tower came down."