North Korea 'can make one nuke a year'

Former US defence chief William Perry says Washington should consider high-level talks with North Korea to defuse tensions.

Former US defence chief William Perry says North Korea is capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tensions.
Mr Perry, who served as defence secretary under president Bill Clinton, has told the Nikkei daily that the US government should review its policies towards North Korea and impose economic sanctions to reiterate its stance against Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
Washington should then coordinate policies with Seoul and Tokyo before eventually sending a special envoy for direct talks with Pyongyang, he said.
Mr Perry suggested former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former US senator Sam Nunn, an expert on nuclear arms reduction, as possible candidates for such talks.
The interview, published on Wednesday, was released in Japanese, with no original English text immediately available.
If North Korea dedicated all of its recently unveiled uranium enrichment facility to making weapons-grade fuel, it could build one nuclear bomb a year, Mr Perry told the paper.
He said he had been briefed by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who recently toured a new uranium enrichment plant with 2,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex.
The facility is likely designed for making fuel for a civilian reactor and not bombs, but there is no way to confirm whether the North has another facility to build nuclear weapons, Mr Perry added.
The former defence chief said he still believed in diplomatic solutions to the North Korean crisis. (From ABC News)