More N.Korea nuclear tests likely if talks fail*

Reuters
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 2:52 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea is likely to conduct more nuclear
tests if six-nation diplomacy to disarm the communist state does not
succeed, the commander of the U.S. military in South Korea told a Senate
hearing on Tuesday.

"If the six-party talks do not produce a lasting settlement, the North
Koreans will likely conduct a second and potentially additional nuclear
tests when they see it as serving their purposes," said General B.B. Bell.

"Without a diplomatic settlement, Pyongyang's plutonium production
capability and its reported HEU (highly enriched uranium) program places
it on track to become a moderate nuclear power, potentially by the end
of the decade," he said in a prepared statement for the U.S. Senate
Armed Services Committee.

North Korea missed an April 14 deadline to start closing its Soviet-era
nuclear reactor and source of plutonium for bombs as required by a deal
the North reached in February with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and
the United States.

North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in October, would
"continue nuclear weapons research and development to perpetuate its
strategy of intimidation" unless contained by the six-party talks, Bell
predicted.

Bell leads the 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to support
that country's 670,000-strong military.

Under a formula that will be phased out in 2012, Bell has wartime
control over both U.S. and South Korean forces who square off against
North Korea's 1.2 million troops, most of which are stationed near the
border that divides the peninsula.