North Korea's nuclear ambitions are the "most daunting security issue facing Asia," according to a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Despite the efforts of the Unites States and other Asian neighbors, the report, released Tuesday, says that "North Korea's efforts to build nuclear weapons remains the most daunting security issue facing the region," and asserts the stalled six-party talks "have made almost no progress" in deterring the North Koreans' nuclear program since they started in 2003.
Washington, DC, May. 25 (UPI) -- North Korea's nuclear ambitions are the "most daunting security issue facing Asia," according to a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Despite the efforts of the Unites States and other Asian neighbors, the report, released Tuesday, says that "North Korea's efforts to build nuclear weapons remains the most daunting security issue facing the region," and asserts the stalled six-party talks "have made almost no progress" in deterring the North Koreans' nuclear program since they started in 2003.
The six-party talks include North Korea, South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.
"With the continued diplomatic stalemate and North Korea's slow motion nuclear build-up, the prognosis for resolving the crisis remains uncertain," the London-based think tank said.
Tensions have been mounting since 2002, when North Korea violated the Agreed Framework -- a 1994 agreement that granted economic and diplomatic incentives to North Korea for halting its enrichment program, including the construction of two nuclear power plants as well as oil shipments from the United States.
Since then North Korea has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by continuing its enrichment program despite a promised halt. The regime forced out two U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency observers from the country in December 2002, and announced plans to reopen a reprocessing plant to begin producing weapons grade plutonium.
Early this year, North Korea officials claimed to have developed a nuclear weapon.
While there is still uncertainty about this assertion, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, maintains North Korea is an imminent threat.
"We know that N. Korea has the material to go into the bombs," ElBaradei said during a May 10 interview with CNN.
North Korea reportedly shut down one of its reactors in 1989 in order to extract plutonium by reprocessing the plant's fuel rods. CIA officials and other U.S. experts have since come to the consensus that enough plutonium was processed for about one or two bombs.
However, since the expulsion of IAEA monitors in December 2002, North Korea has announced plans to reopen a reprocessing plant to produce more plutonium.
By some intelligence estimates, its Yongbyon nuclear reactor has the capacity to produce plutonium for roughly one nuclear weapon a year.
Moreover, Pyongyang is believed to have shared their missile and nuclear technology with other regimes.
In May of 2004 the U.N. Atomic Agency was investigated allegations that North Korea had sent uranium hexafluoride -- a substance used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons -- to Libya two years earlier.
Libya abandoned nuclear ambitions in 2004.
North Korea appeared poised for a diplomatic solution this January when state officials said they were ready to treat the United States as a "friend" and restart stagnant talks on its nuclear program. But subsequent comments made by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling North Korea an "outpost of tyranny" and fresh allegations of uranium sales to Libya, prompted Pyongyang to suspend talks for an "indefinite period."
After a 10-month boycott of the six-party talks, North Korea opted to resume talks with South Korea this month in hopes of expanding relations on the peninsula. This overture has full U.S. support.
North Korea still claims their nuclear weapons program is strictly for self-defense from what they argue is the Bush administration's plan to "antagonize, isolate, and stifle it at any cost."
