The Hindu : International : Seoul to eschew nuclear weapons

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 22, 2004

International

International

Seoul to eschew nuclear weapons

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE: South Korea has reaffirmed its commitment to eschew a nuclear-weapons programme, as inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began an eight-day tour of two `facilities' in the country to verify Seoul's assurances that some laboratory-level experiments there in the past had no arms-related applications. The IAEA team arrived in Seoul on Sunday for the inspections. In focus at this stage is the recently acknowledged extraction of a small quantity of plutonium, as also some experiments regarding the enrichment of uranium. This has already prompted North Korea to question the South's real intentions, ahead of the next round of six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. No date has yet been set for the resumption of these talks, which are attended by the two Koreas as also China, the host, besides the U.S., Japan and Russia. As for the IAEA inspections, the South Korean Foreign Minister, Ban Ki-Moon, said Seoul would fully cooperate with the agency and seek to clear "misunderstandings regarding the nuclear experiments." Chung Dong-Young, the Minister in charge of matters concerning possible unification between the two Koreas, said Seoul "will never pursue a nuclear programme for military purposes, as we have promised in the past." The pledge was first made in 1991, and South Korea has indicated that it would expand the scope of its "peaceful nuclear activities".

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