Former US defence chief William Perry said North Korea was capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tension, in an interview published Wednesday.

Perry, who served as defence secretary under president Bill Clinton, 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 programmes.

Then, Washington should coordinate policies with Seoul and Tokyo before eventually sending a special envoy for direct talks with Pyongyang, Perry told the Nikkei.

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 Nikkei said.

The interview 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, Perry told the paper.

Perry 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 North Korea has another facility to build nuclear weapons, Perry said.

The former defence chief said he still believed in diplomatic solutions to the North Korean crisis.

earlier related report
N.Korea says new nuclear programme is peaceful
Seoul (AFP) Dec 29, 2010 - North Korea said Wednesday its new uranium enrichment plant is designed solely to produce energy, hitting back at the United States for questioning its purpose.

Ruling communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said construction of a light water reactor is "actively underway".

"To ensure fuel supply to the reactor, a modern uranium enrichment plant equipped with thousands of centrifuges is in normal operation," it said, reiterating claims first made early this month.

The nuclear-armed North disclosed the plant to visiting US experts last month, heightening regional security fears. US officials and experts have said it could easily be converted to produce weapons-grade uranium.

The US State Department has said the North has "at least one other" uranium enrichment site in addition to the one it disclosed.

The North shut down its elderly plutonium-producing reactor under a six-nation disarmament deal, but it quit the six-party forum in April 2009 and staged a second nuclear test a month later.

The uranium plant gives it a potential second way of making atomic bombs.

"Development of peaceful nuclear energy is a legitimate right of developing countries and the right to use nuclear energy should not be reserved only for a few countries," Rodong said.

"Some powers with faulty mind including the US are taking issue with our peaceful nuclear activities and plotting to put pressure and impose sanctions on us."

The newspaper blamed the US for failing to honour a 1994 accord to build light-water reactors for the North, in exchange for the shutdown of the plutonium-producing reactor.

The deal broke down in 2002 after the US accused the North of running a secret enriched uranium programme. The reactors were never completed.

"Had the US kept its promise and completed the construction of light-water reactors for us, the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula would not have developed into such a complex situation," the paper said.

Regional unease sparked by the nuclear report intensified after the North shelled a border island last month, killing four South Koreans.

According to US troubleshooter Bill Richardson, who visited Pyongyang this month, the North has offered to permit the return of UN nuclear inspectors and dispose of fuel rods outside the country.

The apparent concessions have not been officially announced.