N. Korea Media Changes Tune On Nukes

A day after a report from North Korea boasted that it had nuclear weapons, state-run media retracted that claim Monday, reverting to the country's usual, vague stand on the issue, a South Korean news agency said.

On Sunday, the North's state-run Pyongyang Radio reported that the country has "come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons due to nuclear threats by U.S. imperialists," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors broadcasts from the North.

Some took the Korean-language report as the North's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons.

But late Monday, another North Korean state-run radio station, Central, broadcast a slightly altered version of the initial report. It replayed the Pyongyang Radio report — but only after changing a key verb, Yonhap said.

North Korea, it said, is "entitled" to have nuclear and other strong military weapons.

Yonhap had played down the significance of the initial report, saying it could have been a mistake by the news anchor. No other Northern media, including its English-language foreign news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, carried it.

Yonhap said Monday's dispatch appeared to reflect the discomfort North Korea's leaders may have felt about widespread reports in the foreign media that Pyongyang had admitted to having nuclear weapons.

Earlier Monday, South Korean officials also expressed doubts about the credibility of Sunday's report.

"In North Korea, such a report should follow an official government statement or policy announcement or comments by a top official," said Choi Young-joon, a chief analyst at South Korea's Unification Ministry.

North Korea admitted to visiting U.S. officials in Pyongyang in October that it had a program to make nuclear weapons with enriched uranium.

Washington said the program violates a 1994 pact, under which North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of fuel oil every year until the reactors were built.

But North Korea claimed Washington first broke the pact, citing delays in the reactors.

A U.S.-led international consortium last week decided to cut off fuel oil shipments to North Korea beginning in December to punish Pyongyang for the nuclear weapons program.

Pyongyang has said it will resolve its nuclear issue if the United States offers a nonaggression pact. Washington has rejected any such talks unless the North scraps its nuclear ambitions "in a prompt and verifiable manner."