US may consider N Korea nuclear buyback: Officials

June 23: The United States may consider offering to buy nuclear weapons-related equipment from North Korea, as it did with the former Soviet Union, if Pyongyang gives up its atomic program, US officials said today.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there has been no US approval of such a formal offer to North Korea.

But he told reporters: ''I can't discount that there are people (in the US government) brainstorming about various ways to address the HEU (highly-enriched uranium) issue.'' Compensating Pyongyang for nuclear-related equipment, especially materials acquired from the black market of Pakistani scientist A.Q.

Khan ''is an idea that is part of a larger set of ideas'' being discussed, another US official told Reuters. However, he added: ''I've heard nothing substantive'' in terms of firm proposals or decisions.

McCormack noted that for decades the United States has compensated states as a way of persuading them to give up their nuclear capabilities.

''If you look back at the Nunn-Lugar program, where you've had buybacks of not only nuclear materials but the technologies and actual machines used to produce those nuclear materials in Central Asia and other places around the world, so there's precedent for such a program. In fact, we've got an ongoing program,'' he said.

''But I can't tell you that it's our policy to try to relate either that program or that concept to the North Korean issue.'' PRECEDENT SET The United States launched the multibillion dollar Nunn-Lugar program after the fall of the Soviet Union. It included retraining thousands of former Soviet nuclear scientists so they would no longer be in the bomb-making business. US officials have long considered applying that program to communist North Korea.

Under a February 13 agreement with the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, Pyongyang agreed to shut down its Yongbyon plutonium-based nuclear facility in exchange for heavy fuel oil. At some point, the North is committed to halt its uranium enrichment program as well.

Plutonium and enriched uranium can both be used to fuel nuclear weapons. North Korea tested a plutonium-based nuclear weapon last October 9 but denies it has a uranium-based program.

Under the February agreement, Pyongyang is supposed to eventually provide a full declaration of its nuclear programs and facilities.

The CIA has said it believes an enrichment program may be ongoing and that Pyongyang has acquired enrichment-related centrifuges and aluminum tubes.

The top US nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, just back from a rare visit to North Korea, said today that Pyongyang was ready to close Yongbyon in weeks and meet other pledges in the disarmament deal.

Asked about wariness in Tokyo about any premature US concessions before Pyongyang disables the reactor, McCormack said he was confident ''we're all on the same page.'' ''We are quite sensitive to the Japanese concerns about abductees,'' he said, referring to the fate of more than a dozen Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. ''We want to in every way we possibly can support the Japanese government working with North Korea to resolve this issue.'' Hill was due to visit Tokyo tomorrow to brief his Japanese counterparts on his visit to North Korea.

Reuters>