CIA to Review N. Korea`s Nuclear Program

The White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies to conduct a review on whether North Korea could produce weapons-grade plutonium — as it says it has done — without detection by the United States, the New York Times reported Thursday quoting senior administration officials.

“We think they are bluffing,” a senior administration official said. “But we felt the necessity to go back and review every possibility, in the off chance that we missed something,” the paper reported.

Other officials noted that the White House and intelligence agencies jointly concluded that all past suspicious nuclear facilities in N. Korea should be revisited and inspected, the paper also added.

In the meantime, as N. Korea warned the U.S. that they would take emergency measures if the U.N. becomes involved in the N. Korean nuclear row, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded that “North Korea has made many statements in a very typical bellicose fashion in the past and speaking in such a blustering manner is N. Korea’s style.”

“However such a statement from North Korea makes no contribution to peace on the Korean peninsula,” Mr. Fleischer added.

On this issue, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said that the U.S. is trying to include South Korea and Japan at the negotiation table on the North Korean nuclear issue, one senior Japanese politician said after having a talk with James Kelly.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had a summit meeting in Berlin today, and said that “the U.S. should refrain from using force to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue; they must seek peace not violence as occurred in Iraq.”