Nuclear Warheads Likely to Be Left Out of N. Korea’s Report

Most content of a recent tentative agreement between North Korea and the United States in Pyongyang is about plutonium, and will reportedly not include the number of warheads (nuclear explosive devices) that the United States has demanded from North Korea to date.

The report that North Korea is expected to submit to the six-party talks in a couple of weeks includes records of plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor, the total amount of plutonium North Korea has extracted, as well as nuclear-related records, including the daily log of a 5 MW nuclear reactor, a source said.

The source also added that based on the agreement in Singapore last month, North Korea and the United States reached an agreement to separately deal with North Korea’s suspected uranium enrichment program (UEP) and its nuclear technology cooperation with Syria through a secret MOU.

A government official said on Friday that, “At the current stage, it is too early to include nuclear warheads in the North Korean report. Given the state-of-the-art nuclear-related technology we have today, it is no longer hard to figure out exactly how much plutonium has been extracted if we obtain certain amounts of samples and the dates of operation of the nuclear reactor.”

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