US envoy Stephen Bosworth voiced concerns during his visit to North Korea last week about the country's uranium enrichment programme, a South Korean ruling party official said Tuesday.
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac told lawmakers that the US envoy had raised concerns about the enrichment programme at talks with North Korean officials, a Grand National Party (GNP) official told AFP.
Wi's comments were made as he briefed GNP lawmakers on his meeting with Bosworth, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Wi, however, told the lawmakers there were no formal discussions between Bosworth and North Korean authorities over the issue, the official said.
After a three-day trip to Pyongyang, Bosworth said in Seoul that enriched uranium would be a major issue when North Korea returns to six-party disarmament talks.
The US envoy said Washington and Pyongyang agreed on the need to resume the six-party forum. But he said it was unclear when the North would return to the forum, which groups the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.
North Korea said in September that it had reached the final stage of enriching uranium, a second way of making nuclear bombs on top of its plutonium-based programme, in a defiant response to United Nations sanctions.
The sanctions were tightened after the North in May conducted its second, plutonium-based nuclear test.
Experts believe the North has enough plutonium for possibly six to eight bombs. A full-scale enriched uranium programme is seen as a distant prospect, but troubling because it could be easily hidden from spy satellites.
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