N. Korea renews nuclear warning in typical pattern to shake things up: analysts By Kim Hyun

SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Yonhap) -- North Korea raised the stakes in the standoff over its nuclear program Friday by claiming it has taken a further step in uranium enrichment, a pressure tactic analysts here say is a bid by the communist state to extract U.S. bilateral action and stem toughening international sanctions.

For Pyongyang, the nuclear issue is the core to its regime survival that cannot
be compromised and runs on a separate track from its diplomacy that has recently
been softening toward South Korea and the United States, they said.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, North Korea said its experimental
uranium enrichment program, an alternative route to building nuclear weapons in
addition to its plutonium-based one, has "successfully" entered into "completion
phase." It also said plutonium extracted from reprocessing spent fuel rods at the
country's main Yongbyon nuclear facilities is "being weaponized."
The warning was a step higher from a statement in June, in which North Korea said
it had begun uranium enrichment and would weaponize the plutonium from Yongbyon.
The earlier statement was issued in retaliation to the U.N. Security Council's
resolution to curb cash flows into the country as a punishment for its nuclear
test in May.
"The earlier warning was largely ignored by the United States," Koh Yu-hwan, a
North Korea studies professor at Dongguk University, said.
The letter to the U.N. is a typical North Korean tactic for demanding
negotiations, he said. The North timed the announcement with a three-nation Asia
trip by Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative on North Korea policy,
who arrives in Seoul later Friday, he said.
"This is a time-honored North Korean pattern, asking 'Are you going to let us do
the enrichment or settle this through negotiation,'" Koh said.
"But when the verbal warning brings nothing, the North usually goes into action.
Now is the verbal stage, and North Korea will see how the related countries
respond."
Pyongyang's recent conciliatory steps had raised speculation that the country may
turn more receptive to international demands to abandon its nuclear weapons.
During just a month's period in August, North Korea released detained South
Korean and American citizens, restored stalled inter-Korean ventures and sent a
delegation to Seoul to pay condolences to late former South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung. Such moves were a dramatic turnaround from its long-range rocket launch
in April and nuclear and missile tests that followed.
Despite such softening gestures, the U.S. has insisted that it will neither
support the easing of the international sanctions nor bilaterally engage
Pyongyang outside the six-party framework that also involves South Korea, China,
Japan and Russia.
"North Korea is demonstrating again there must be bilateral dialogue with the
U.S.," Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea studies professor at Korea University, said.
"It is laying out two options -- to continue the futile attempts to try to change
North Korea with U.N. sanctions, or to start either bilateral talks or create a
whole new multilateral frame that acknowledges North Korea as a nuclear power."
Sanctions were weighing heavily on North Korea's arms trade, a major source of
income for the impoverished state. The United Arab Emirates seized a North Korean
vessel carrying weapons to Iran last month in the first seizure of a North Korean
arms shipment under Resolution 1874, adopted after Pyongyang's nuclear test. The
letter to the U.N. was sent in response to questions from the U.N. sanctions
committee about the caught shipment.
David Straub, a former U.S. State Department official who accompanied former U.S.
President Bill Clinton on his trip to Pyongyang last month, said the Barack Obama
administration is unlikely to drop its demand for North Korea to return to the
six-party talks.
"The DPRK's most recent conciliatory steps may very well be nothing more than yet
another 'charm offensive' intended to deflect international pressure to abandon
its nuclear weapons," Straub said in a commentary published in Seoul's Korea
Focus this week.
"For that reason, the Obama administration insists that it will not support an
easing of sanctions until the DPRK is clearly on the path of denuclearization,"
he said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)