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UNITED NATIONS — North Korea has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into weapons to serve as a deterrent against a possible nuclear strike by the United States, a North Korean minister said Monday.

Warning that the danger of war on the Korean peninsula "is snowballing," Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon blamed the United States for intensifying threats to attack the communist nation and destroying the basis for negotiations to resolve the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Without specifying what kinds or the number of weapons it has, Choe said North Korea has been left with "no other option but to possess a nuclear deterrent" because of U.S. policies that he claimed were designed to "eliminate the DPRK by force while designating it as part of an `axis of evil' and a target of pre-emptive nuclear strikes."

DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

When asked if the fuel had been turned into actual weapons, not just weapons-grade material, Choe said: "We declared that we weaponized this."

In Washington, a State Department official noted that the administration has long believed North Korea has at least one or two nuclear weapons. The official, who asked not to be identified, also said the North Koreans have made conflicting statements about how far along their weapons development programs have come.




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