Annie
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- Nov 22, 2003
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&u=/ap/20050210/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_nuclear&printer=1
N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
20 minutes ago
By SANG-HUN CHOE, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea (news - web sites) on Thursday announced for the first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.
The communist state's pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to President Bush (news - web sites), who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation talks.
"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The claim could not be independently verified. North Korea expelled the last U.N. nuclear monitors in late 2002 and has never tested a nuclear bomb, although international officials have long suspected it has one or two nuclear bombs and enough fuel for several more.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said Washington would consult allies before responding.
"I think we just have to first look at the statement and then we need to talk with our allies," Rice told Dutch RTL television while on a trip through Europe.
"The North Koreans have no reason to believe that anyone wants to attack them," she added. "They have been told they can have multilateral security assurances if they will make the important decision to give up their nuclear weapons program. So there is really no reason for this, but we will examine where we go next." [...]