N.Korea can build one nuclear bomb a year: US official
Former US defence chief William Perry said North Korea was capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tension, in an interview published Wednesday.
Perry, who served as defence secretary under president Bill Clinton, told the Nikkei daily the US government should review its policies towards North Korea and impose economic sanctions to reiterate its stance against Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes.
If North Korea dedicated all of its recently unveiled uranium enrichment facility to making weapons-grade fuel, it could build one nuclear bomb a year, Perry told the paper.
Perry said he had been briefed by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who recently toured a new uranium enrichment plant with 2,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex.