LOC17:10
14:10 GMT
TOKYO, Nov 22 (KUNA) -- North Korea's claim to have secretly constructed a
uranium enrichment facility is "absolutely unacceptable," Japanese Prime
Minister Naoto Kan said Monday.
His remarks came after a US scientist revealed he had toured a modern, new
uranium enrichment plant during a recent trip to North Korea's Yongbyon
nuclear complex. "We will cooperate with the US and other countries to deal
with this issue," Kan told reporters.
Meanwhile, the country's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and US Special
Representative for North Korea Policy Stephen Bosworth agreed to work together
with South Korea to address Pyongyang's nuclear program.
During their talks in Tokyo, Maehara said if the North builds the nuclear
facility, it is "really something grave" and a violation of UN Security
Council resolutions that prohibit the country from carrying out nuclear
development.
Bosworth, who arrived here from Seoul earlier in the day, said the
situation "is not a crisis."
American scientist Siegfried Hecker said over the weekend that he saw more
than 1,000 new centrifuges for processing uranium on November 12. The
development of the new facility would allow the North to produce enriched
uranium-based nuclear bombs in the future. Pyongyang conducted plutonium-based
nuclear tests twice, in 2006 and 2009.
North Korea said last April that it resumed reprocessing nuclear spent fuel
rods to produce plutonium at the Yongbyon complex, some 90 kilometers north of
Pyongyang, in protest against a punitive UN resolution for its long-range
rocket launch earlier that month.
The complex had been disabled in accordance with six-party agreements
involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan. The six-way talks
involving two Koreas, the US Russia, Japan and China aimed at North Korea's
denuclearization have not been held since late 2008. (end)
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KUNA 221710 Nov 10NNNN