North Korea says in last stage of enriching uranium

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it was closer to a second way of making nuclear weapons, a move analysts saw as a new tactic to put pressure on the international community after a month of conciliatory gestures.

The chief U.S. envoy for the North, Stephen Bosworth, said the enrichment claim was "of concern," while Russia described the announcement as "very alarming."

Bosworth was in Beijing on a trip to Asia to discuss ways to bring Pyongyang back to long-stalled negotiations on giving up its nuclear ambitions.

"Experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase," the North's KCNA news agency quoted its United Nations delegation as saying in a letter to the head of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).

The United States has long suspected the North of having a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons. Experts have said it has not developed anything near a full-scale uranium program while it has enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.

"I think for all of us, it reconfirms the necessity to maintain a coordinated position on the need for complete, verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," Bosworth said, after meetings with Chinese officials.

The North said its latest steps were in response to tighter sanctions.

"These reports cannot but provoke concern," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying [ID:nL4503067]

"A very alarming precedent is being created by such an open and demonstrative disdain for resolutions of the United Nations Security Council."

At the United Nations, the mission of the United States, which currently holds the Security Council presidency, said it had received the North Korean letter and circulated it to the other 14 members of the council.

U.N. sanctions have hurt the impoverished North's arms trade, one of its few significant exports, and analysts said it may be angered its latest attempts at conciliation with the outside world have been largely rebuffed.

The United States has refused to ease up on the sanctions, and sent its point man for their enforcement to Asia last month to build support.

"Now they (North Korea) are taking the road that they know will drive a response out of all countries -- the military way -- and leaving them to decide what to do," said Cho Myung-chul, an expert on the North at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

WEAPONISING

North Korea added that reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods was at its final phase and extracted plutonium was being weaponized.

"We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions. If some permanent members of the UNSC wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue."

In another move that serves as a reminder of the tension on the divided peninsula, a North Korean patrol vessel crossed briefly into the South's waters on Friday but returned without incident, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

"They are taking a mixed strategy, which I would call the sweet and sour approach. This keeps their adversaries guessing and it makes it more difficult to formulate policy," said Peter Beck, research fellow at Stanford University and a specialist on Korean affairs.

Market players, used to North Korea blowing hot and cold, said the latest rumblings had little impact on early trading.

Pyongyang laid the blame squarely on the U.N. Security Council for imposing sanctions over its rocket launch in April and ignoring one by South Korea late last month.

"Had the UNSC, from the very beginning, not made an issue of the DPRK's (North Korea's) peaceful satellite launch in the same way as it kept silent over the satellite launch conducted by South Korea on August 25, 2009, it would not have compelled the DPRK to take strong counteraction such as its 2nd nuclear test.

LAUNCH QUESTIONS

Pyongyang said its launch was to put a communications satellite into space. Others said it was to test a ballistic missile with the potential to hit U.S. territory.

The North has already tested two plutonium-based nuclear devices, the one in May triggering tightened international sanctions.

It reiterated on Friday its opposition to six-country talks over its nuclear weapons program, talks it walked away from last December. The talks among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States offered Pyongyang massive aid and an end to isolation if it gives up efforts to build an atomic arsenal.

North Korea in the past month released two U.S. journalists, a South Korean worker and fishermen it had held in separate incidents. It ended border restrictions it placed on the South and sought to resume frozen business projects with its neighbor.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim, Yoo Choonsik, Cho Meeyoung and Jon Herskovitz in Seoul, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Jerry Norton and Alex Richardson)