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US doesnt believe mushroom cloud was nuclear { September 12 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nkorea13sep13,1,2528604.story?coll=la-home-headlineshttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nkorea13sep13,1,2528604.story?coll=la-home-headlines
U.S. Doesn't Believe North Korea Blast Was Nuclear Test
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer
6:27 PM PDT, September 12, 2004
WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials said Sunday that a huge explosion last week in North Korea did not appear to have been a nuclear test, but they warned the communist regime that detonating such a weapon would be a serious political mistake.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, appeared on Sunday-morning news shows and downplayed the significance of the explosion, even while acknowledging that they did not know what had caused it.
"We've seen reports of this explosion, but based on all the information that we have, it was not any kind of nuclear event," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." "We're trying to find out more about it and what exactly it was, if anything."
South Korean officials told Reuters news service on Sunday that they, too, did not believe that North Korea had exploded a nuclear device, despite the appearance of a suspicious formation over the area that some described as looking like the kind of mushroom cloud formed after a nuclear detonation.
The blast occurred last Thursday in a remote northeast area near North Korea's border with China.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the blast site was about six miles from North Korea's Yongjori missile base, in a mountainous area that is off-limits to outsiders, including aid workers. The base has tunnels for storing, deploying and launching medium-range Rodong missiles, the paper said.
So far, North Korea has not commented either on the explosion or on what may have caused it. Thursday was the 56th anniversary of the communist state's founding -- a day when the country might have been likely to show off any new technology it had developed.
But several nuclear nonproliferation experts said in interviews Sunday that the explosion was probably caused by an accident at the missile base, or even by a mining explosion or an accidental detonation at a fuel depot.
"If this was a nuclear blast, we would have known about it," said Joseph Cirincione, a former U.S. nuclear nonproliferation official who heads the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The United States, he said, uses several kinds of cutting-edge technology to detect even the most minute presence of radiation in the atmosphere above North Korea, as well as seismic and visual analysis and satellite imagery that would corroborate any kind of nuclear test.
North Korean officials revealed in October 2002 that the country had restarted its nuclear program, which it had pledged to halt in 1994 in return for fuel oil and two light-water reactors to produce electricity. It is believed to have enough weapons-grade plutonium for several bombs.
Recent negotiations to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear program in return for aid and security guarantees have stalled, and a breakthrough before the U.S. election appears unlikely.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on CNN's "Late Edition" that the panel would receive a classified briefing on the explosion this week.
Roberts said he had received mixed reports on the cause of the blast. But he said the event only deepened his concerns that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appeared to be developing nuclear weapons and trying to use them to manipulate the United States and the other countries -- South Korea, China, Japan and Russia -- currently engaged in negotiations with the North.
Powell, who also appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and ABC's "This Week," would not say whether he believed the North Korean regime was in the process of conducting a nuclear test. But he said administration officials were closely monitoring activities at a possible nuclear test site in North Korea.
"We have been watching it. We can't tell whether it's normal maintenance activity or something more," Powell told Fox. "So it's inconclusive at this moment, but we continue to monitor these things very carefully."
Rice warned on "Late Edition" that North Korea "would make a very bad mistake" by exploding a nuclear weapon -- especially because it would polarize China, "with which they have a lot at stake."
Asked whether the United States would consider intervening militarily if North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, Rice said, "Well, the president never takes any option off the table, but we believe that the way to resolve this is diplomatically."
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