| During the official talks, a North Korean representative claimed that his country had "successfully reprocessed almost all of the 8,000 spent fuel rods" that it has been threatening to reprocess, a feat that U.S. intelligence cannot verify.
Afterwards, a North Korean official apparently pulled aside U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and declared that his country indeed has nuclear bombs, something that the U.S. has long suspected.
According to one "bizarre" account in the Wall Street Journal, the official then told Kelly that whether North Korea uses, tests or exports the bombs "depends on your next step."
While the Washington Post's lead specifically cites the threat as well, the New York Time's off-lead writes around it and the LA Time's sources insist that no threat "to test or export" was ever made: "They used ambiguous language about what they might do and then said, 'It all depends on you.'"
Although the papers all mention unnamed administration hawks who want to strike North Korea militarily or set up a tough new sanctions regime in response, they also cite sources who say ambiguous North Korean offers to dismantle its nuclear weapons program signal that more talks may be forthcoming. "There was a lot of bluster," one "source" told the LA Times. "They were obnoxious at times and also ambiguous at times. The best summary is that they were North Koreans. This is the way these people act." | |
