Destruction of its nuclear cooling tower was important but largely symbolic.
North Korea’s destruction last week of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear facility was a spectacular piece of geopolitical theater. But as the concrete crumbled, did Pyongyang’s ability to produce plutonium really crumble as well?
The tower’s fall largely was symbolic, say experts. In addition, [...]

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Damascus and Pyongyang helped Iran to develop its nuclear programme through the construction of a suspected nuclear site in Syria that Israel destroyed last September, Der Spiegel reported.
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he reports cited by Der Speigel claimed that North Korea was to help Iranian scientists to advance their nuclear programme, and that Al-Kibar was to have been used [...]

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“The Germans have those drawings. The South Africans have those drawings. The French have those drawings. They were the suppliers. You can’t blame me for it. They were selling. They were making money. Why put blame on me?” Khan said during the interview from his villa in Islamabad, where he remains under house arrest.
Khan said [...]

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Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment — a route to making a nuclear weapon — to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well.
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Video: The [...]

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The ferocity with which Israel responded to the threat posed by a nuclear weapons program in the hands of one of its worst enemies contrasts with the reluctance of the U.S. to attack North Korea’s nuclear facilities over years of off-again, on-again efforts to get the North to abandon the program.
Although the U.S. has repeatedly [...]

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In a move that could upset Washington’s policy towards North Korea, US intelligence officials are set to tell lawmakers this week that Pyongyang shared nuclear know-how with Syria, one official said Wednesday.
The United States has concluded that the Stalinist regime’s help came both before and after a Syrian nuclear reactor being built in secret with [...]

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Financial sanctions have a big place in a tool-box designed to thwart the proliferators of Pyongyang and Tehran.
To hawkish critics of Mr Bush’s readiness to negotiate with both North Korea and Iran (if only the latter would suspend its uranium and plutonium work as the UN Security Council has demanded) on nuclear matters, these setbacks [...]

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The longstanding U.S.-South Korea alliance, more than five decades old, has gone through a difficult period as of late. Among the many issues bedeviling this once solid relationship: disagreement over how to handle Pyongyang following this summer’s missile tests, a generational divide in opinion on the alliance and the U.S. military presence which underpins it, [...]

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s nuclear test last October was a failure and gives no credence to Pyongyang’s claim to being a nuclear weapons state, U.S. CIA Director Michael Hayden was quoted as saying by a South Korean newspaper on Wednesday.
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(BEIJING) — A senior U.S. Treasury Department official held talks in China on Monday as part of efforts to untangle a dispute over North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank that led to a breakdown in talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, met officials from [...]

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HONG KONG: North Korea�s nuclear test has unnerved Japanese citizens, who are barely a missile strike away from Pyongyang. In response, home owners and businesses in Japan are increasingly preparing for a doomsday scenario by building underground bunkers that can withstand atomic force explosions.
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