WORLD BRIEFING / NORTH KOREA

North Korea said today that it was in the final stages of enriching uranium, a process that could give the nation a second way to make nuclear bombs in addition to its known plutonium-enriching program.

The official Korean Central News Agency said in a report that North Korea informed the U.N. Security Council that it was forging ahead with its nuclear programs in defiance of international calls to abandon its atomic ambitions.

The dispatch said plutonium “is being weaponized,” and that uranium enrichment -- a program North Korea revealed in recent months -- was entering the “completion phase.” Experts had long suspected the regime had a secret uranium enrichment program, which would give it a second source of nuclear material.