UN Nuclear Inspectors Begin Work in Iran as N. Korea Says It Is Making Nuclear Bombs

02/10/2003| IslamWeb

United Nations inspectors have left Vienna for Iran where they will attempt to verify whether the country's nuclear programme is for energy purposes only, as Tehran insists. Before boarding his plane, the deputy director general of the UN's atomic watchdog, the IAEA, Pierre Goldschmidt, commented: "We have only a few weeks to progress and report to the next board, so I expect we are going to make great progress." If Goldschmidt cannot give Iran a clean bill of health at the November board meeting, the matter will probably be sent to the UN Security Council, which could impose economic and diplomatic sanctions. Tehran has announced it will carry on with its uranium enrichment programme, in defiance of an IAEA resolution. The United States says the programme is part of plans to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran vehemently denies. **North Korea Says It Is Making Nuclear Bombs*** Meanwhile, North Korea said Thursday it has completed reprocessing its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and is using plutonium extracted from them to make atomic bombs. "The (North) successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA. The spokesman was not named. Accusing the United States of taking a "hostile policy" toward the North, the statement said that North Korea "made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction increasing its nuclear deterrent force." North Korea also said it will reprocess more spent fuel rods to be produced from the small reactor in its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. **PHOTO CAPTION*** South Korean multiple missile launchers troops parade during the 55th Armed Forces Day ceremony at the Sungnam military airport in outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2003. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)