by CKR
The WaPo today reports that the US and North Korea conducted separate bilateral discussions before the six-party talks resume on Tuesday. Apparently the talks amounted only to an hour, but that’s an hour more than previously.
Jim Yardley also covers the story in the NYT.
Douglas Jehl and David Sanger report in today’s NYT that there have been conflicting interpretations of intelligence on North Korea’s actions.
In a classified briefing on April 26, at about the same time Washington was warning its allies, the Central Intelligence Agency told Congress that it was unlikely that North Korea would conduct a nuclear test anytime soon. Moreover, the White House had assessed the probability of a North Korean test this spring as relatively low, officials say. And they say that the claim by some analysts and administration officials of a reviewing stand, which was reported in a front-page article in The New York Times and then by several other news organizations, was apparently based on misinterpretations of inconclusive or incomplete data and should not have been circulated outside the government.
North Korea does a lot of tunneling in their mountains. A rectangular wood structure could be almost anything: a reviewing stand or a packing crate to send a Nodong missile to Pakistan. It matters where this is happening, of course, but given the uncertainties of intelligence on North Korea, do the analysts have a good idea of where they might test a nuclear device?
As time goes on, I am becoming more skeptical that the North Koreans have any nuclear weapons at all. Certainly one report from a defector is not credible for multiple reasons. It’s possible to calculate amounts of plutonium from reactor schedules that add up to something like eight or nine bombs. But additional parts and know-how are required to make those bombs. Although the North Koreans tried to present a convincing story to Sig Hecker, that did not add up to a bomb either. And no test has ensued.
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