N. Korean Project Draws Suspicion

The United States is monitoring a massive underground construction project in North Korea that officials fear could conceal missile or nuclear weapons development.

National security officials have reached no conclusions about the project. “For all we know, it could be a big underground parking garage,” one senior defense official said Monday.

But White House and Pentagon officials fear that the complex is part of an effort to renege on a 1994 agreement for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for Western aid.

North Korean officials have said the United States has not lived up to its end of the pact because Congress hasn’t authorized fuel shipments to North Korea.

The shipments are the crux of the U.S. contribution to a $6-billion pot to finance a North Korean electric energy program in return for an end to North Korea’s nuclear arms plans.