N. Korea Nuclear Bid Assessed

North Korea will need “at least several years” to complete its first nuclear weapons, although the Communist nation has extracted enough plutonium to build one or two nuclear bombs, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry revealed its estimates of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities in a 225-page report on weapons of mass destruction, which was published Tuesday.

This month, President Bush threatened unspecified “consequences” if Iraq and North Korea produce weapons of mass destruction.

In its report, the South Korean ministry said “available intelligence” led it to believe that the North extracted 22 to 26 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactors before shutting them down under a 1994 deal with the United States.

North Korea also conducted at least 70 nuclear-related tests of high explosives between 1983 and 1993, the report says. It continued the tests until 1998 but has apparently had difficulty acquiring components necessary to make the devices dependable, it says.

“North Korea may have a capability of putting together a crude nuclear explosion device,” the report says. “But its technology is believed to be still in a rudimentary stage.

“Even if it has manufactured an explosion device, it will be still low in dependability and it will take the North at least several years to turn the system into a weapon,” it says.

A U.S.-led consortium is building two light-water reactors in North Korea. In exchange, the nation agreed to halt use of reactors suspected of producing plutonium.