North Korea Claims Nuclear Advances, China, U.S. Confer

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing discussed the issue by telephone on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

China’s latest effort to broker meetings comes a day after the U.S. acknowledged that North Korean officials had informed them last week that it had successfully reprocessed plutonium fuel rods, a key step in the production of nuclear weapons.

North Korea has asked for direct talks with the United States while American officials have maintained that talks should include North Korea’s neighbors — South Korea, Japan, and China.

Chinese officials this week suggested a compromise that would include talks among all five countries but provide an opportunity for U.S. and North Korean negotiators to break off for private discussions. Japanese officials have reportedly expressed support for the Chinese plan.

Neither the United States nor North Korea have officially responded to the Chinese proposal, but the Washington Post reported Wednesday that U.S. officials “greeted the idea coolly, saying they were interested only in multilateral talks.”

The North Korean news agency ran an article on its Web site Wednesday that called for the United States to agree to direct talks followed by multilateral talks — a proposal it described as new, “flexible and innovative.”

According to weapons experts, North Korea’s cache of 8,000 spent fuel rods could be used to produce five or six nuclear devices. U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe North Korea may already possess one or two nuclear bombs.

U.S. officials have said it is unclear whether North Korea has actually reprocessed the fuel rods, but that they are taking the announcement seriously.

“I’m not in a position to characterize the intelligence assessment of what the North Koreans are telling us, but certainly what they’ve told us in the past has been worth paying attention to,” Lawrence Di Rita, a top aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Tuesday.

U.S. officials also said they would not be forced into talks by threats from North Korea.

“We will not submit to blackmail or grant inducements to the North to live up to its obligations,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. McClellan added that the U.S. seeks a “multi-lateral” diplomatic solution but it would not rule out the use of force.