North Korea could make bombs: UN

DANGER: Amid worries that Pyongyang may test a nuclear weapon, a UN agency warned that the country may have enough plutonium for six bombs

AP , VIENNA

North Korea may have enough weapons-grade plutonium to make up to six nuclear bombs, the head of the UN atomic watchdog agency said in another warning about the reclusive regime's secretive nuclear program.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Cable News Network on Sunday evening that Pyongyang has the nuclear infrastructure to convert the material into atomic weapons.

"We knew they had the plutonium that could be converted into five or six North Korea weapons," ElBaradei told CNN.

Recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be preparing to test a weapon underground, and the IAEA has been urging the international community to increase pressure on Pyongyang to refrain from any such test.

IAEA inspectors were expelled from North Korea in 2002, and the agency has stressed that there is no way to know for sure whether the country is close to producing a nuclear weapon or is getting ready to test one.

Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said yesterday that estimates of the amount of nuclear material North Korea holds were based on pre-expulsion inspections of the country's 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon.

"When our inspectors were there, they were monitoring the freeze at the Yongbyon facility and in particular the 8,000 spent fuel rods that were stored there," he said. "We can estimate the amount of plutonium they could contain."

ElBaradei described the latest developments as a "cry for help" on Pyongyang's part.

"North Korea, I think, has been seeking a dialogue with the United States, with the rest of the international community ... through their usual policy of nuclear blackmail, nuclear brinkmanship, to force the other parties to engage them," he said.

"We know that they had the industrial infrastructure to weaponize this plutonium. We have read also that they have the delivery system," ElBaradei told CNN. "I do hope that the North Koreans would absolutely reconsider such a reckless, reckless step."

Last month, diplomats told reporters that the US was warning its allies that North Korea may be ready to carry out a nuclear test as early as June, basing the assessment in part on satellite photographs that suggested it was digging an underground test site.

The reported US warnings reflected growing fears in Washington that the North is going ahead with efforts to develop nuclear weapons after South Korean officials said Pyongyang had recently shut down a reactor, possibly to harvest plutonium that could be used in an underground test.

The Yongbyon reactor generated spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, but they must be removed and reprocessed to extract the plutonium for use in an atomic weapon. They can be removed only if the reactor has been shut down.

The US intelligence community believes North Korea has one or more nuclear weapons, and has untested two- and three-stage missiles capable of reaching US soil. But it has been unclear whether Pyongyang has yet developed the technology to miniaturize a nuclear weapon so it fits on a missile.

China broods over fate of penal gulag after EU pressure

OUTSIDE THE LAW: The EU has said it wants to see a major human rights move, such as overhauling the penal system, before it will lift its arms embargo

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , Zibo, China

For a Chinese government that regularly promises its citizens a society governed by the rule of law, the case of a neatly dressed man named Li is a reminder of what still remains outside the law.

Here in a bleak stretch of eastern China, Li, 40, spent two years in a prison called Shandong No. 2 Labor Re-education Camp. Li, who spoke on condition that only his surname be used, and other followers of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong have been jailed here despite never having a lawyer or a trial -- rights granted under China's criminal law.

That is because Shandong No. 2 is part of a vast penal system in China that is separate from the judicial system. Falun Gong members are hardly the only inmates. Locked inside more than 300 prisons in this system are an estimated 300,000 prostitutes, drug users, petty criminals and political prisoners who have been stripped of legal rights.

Change mulled

In a nondemocratic country like China, such abuse of legal rights might not seem surprising. But this system, a relic of the Mao Zedong era, is now presenting a difficult issue for a modern day Communist Party that remains obsessed with security and political control.

The government this year is expected to begin privately considering whether, and how, to change the system. The EU has stated that for China to achieve one of its most prized goals -- lifting Europe's arms embargo -- it needs to make a significant gesture on human rights.

But changing labor re-education could force the Communist Party to give up a major tool it has used to maintain its hold on power.

"It is important for the power holders that a system like labor re-education stay in place," said Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer in Beijing and an advocate of changing the system.

No trials

The crackdown on Falun Gong followers like Li is a case in point. When Jiang Zemin ordered a roundup as president in 1999, the existence of labor re-education meant the police could sweep up thousands of people without the complications of court trials.

"If they wanted to imprison these tens of thousands of followers through normal judicial processes, it would have been impossible because what these people were doing was not a crime," Gao said.

For advocates of change, the heart of the debate is not about Falun Gong but about the broader effort at systemic change to establish "rule of law."

Chen Xingliang, deputy dean of the Beijing University Law School, said these advocates want to transform labor re-education into a misdemeanor correctional system where detainees would have a right to a lawyer and a trial before a judge.

Sentences, which can now reach a maximum of four years, would be limited to about 18 months. And, most significantly, authority would shift from the police to China's judicial branch.