North Korea is nuclear blackmailer: US General

Seoul, Nov 29: North Korea was building nuclear weapons for political blackmail, the head of US forces in South Korea today said adding he was not overly worried about the military threat they posed.

US General B B Bell said in an address to business leaders in South Korea that he did not think the government in Pyongyang would collapse soon.

''The North has built nuclear weapons as an instrument of political policy in order to blackmail nations in the area,'' Bell said, adding Pyongyang also hoped their atomic ambitions may cause fissures in the US-South Korean military alliance.

A senior envoy of the communist state said yesterday that North Korea was now prepared to return to six-country talks on its nuclear weapons programme because it had ''gained a defensive position'' with a nuclear test.

Bell said those who had been paying close attention to North Korea's atomic ambitions had not been surprised by that October 9 test.

''I'm not worried about their nukes militarily,'' Bell said.

''I see this as a political instrument much more so than I see it as a military instrument.'' Proliferation experts said it was unlikely North Korea had the technology to miniaturise nuclear weapons to mount them on missiles and its aging air force would have trouble penetrating US defences in order to deliver a nuclear bomb.

REUTERS

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