Nahmyo Thomas
Newswire21.org

Prepared for sanctions, North Korea has confirmed it successfully carried out uranium-enrichment tests and extracted a new supply of radioactive material for nuclear weapons.

The advancements defy the international demand for North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons programs. North Korea already uses plutonium to fuel nuclear weapons. If it can also enrich uranium, the country will have two sources from which to produce nuclear bombs.

"Uranium enrichment tests have been successfully carried out and that process is in the concluding stage," Korea's Central News Agency reported on Friday.

Quoting a letter from delegates to the United Nations Security Council, the news agency said North Korea was "prepared for both sanctions and dialogue."

Nuclear weapons have been the main bargaining chip for North Korea for years. The letter warned that "if some permanent members of the UN Security Council wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, [North Korea] would respond with bolstering [its] nuclear deterrence first before [they] meet them in a dialogue."

North Korea's most recent underground nuclear test was completed on May 25. As punishment, the UN Security Council imposed new sanctions, but the country tested the alternative of enriching uranium anyway.

While the progress was announced, the exact status of a full uranium-enrichment program remains unconfirmed.

Shift in Tone
The announcement comes after more peaceable actions in which North Korea released two detained US journalists and met with South Korea less than two weeks ago for the first time in two years.

Although it has previously been suspected that North Korea lead a uranium-enrichment program, these claims could bring the international community back to the negotiating table.

The US special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, told Reuters that this "reconfirms the necessity to maintain a coordinated position on the need for complete, verifiable denuclearizing of the Korean peninsula."

North Korea has placed additional pressure on the US, by stating "we have never objected to the denuclearizing of the Korean Peninsula, it depends strictly on the United States' nuclear policy on Korea," reported the KCNA.