N. Korea Denies It Has a Warhead

North Korean officials told an unofficial U.S. delegation last week that many claims about their nuclear program were exaggerated and that they did not have a nuclear warhead or a program to secretly enrich uranium for such a weapon, said sources familiar with the trip.

The North Koreans did, however, reiterate their claim to have produced weapons-grade plutonium and showed the delegation their facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex and what was purported to be a sample of the plutonium.

“They said, ‘We have the potential to make nuclear weapons, but we do not have a weapon,’ ” said a South Korean official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They were very adamant in their denials, especially about the highly enriched uranium.”

The visit Friday to the Yongbyon compound about 60 miles north of Pyongyang marked the first time that outsiders have been allowed a glimpse of the nuclear program since the expulsion of U.N. arms inspectors a year ago. Among those in the six-person delegation was Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, who also had lengthy conversations with North Korean officials at Yongbyon.

The delegation was shown the cooling pond where fuel rods from North Korea’s 5-megawatt nuclear reactor are stored and what was said to be weapons-grade plutonium recently reprocessed from the fuel rods. But because the delegation was not allowed to take samples or photographs and was not given documents, it is difficult to confirm the exact nature of the material.

“The U.S. delegates consistently said they had a hard time making a final decision on what they had seen in the North,” Wi Sung Lac, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters Monday.

Two members of the delegation, Senate Foreign Relations Committee aides Frank Januzzi and Keith Luse, briefed South Korean officials Monday in Seoul on the visit. The delegation is expected to make a complete report to the U.S. Congress on Jan 20.

The North Korean denial of producing highly enriched uranium -- an alternate method for making nuclear bombs -- was particularly interesting to the U.S. delegates because it seemed to mark a change in tactics. In October 2001, a North Korean official apparently boasted in a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly that they did have such a program. That meeting threw U.S.-North Korean relations into crisis.

Ever since, there has been much debate about exactly what was said in the 2001 meeting and how it was translated. The North Koreans have told the Chinese and the South Koreans that the Americans misunderstood their remarks.

During last week’s visit, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan told the U.S. delegates emphatically and unequivocally that there is no highly enriched uranium program.

U.S. and South Korean intelligence agents have gathered what they consider to be irrefutable evidence that the North Koreans were importing sophisticated centrifuges, aluminum and lubricants for uranium enrichment. The CIA also believes North Korea has produced one or two simple nuclear weapons.

“We don’t necessarily believe them. I think they realize they made a mistake when they admitted it before and they want to take it back,” said a South Korean official. “But we think they are very serious about wanting to negotiate in order to survive. They wanted to show the Americans that their nuclear program is transparent, that they are cooperative and they want to resolve this diplomatically.”