N Korea may test nukes by Dec: US analyst

"To the best of my knowledge, based on very well-informed Washington sources, North Korea's nuclear program is moving ahead very quickly," Kenneth Quinones was quoted as saying by the Daily Yomiuri.

"Basically, this means North Korea's reprocessing (of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel) is almost finished, or has finished. This means North Korea now has enough plutonium to make six to 10 nuclear weapons," he said.

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"If North Korea wants to use their nuclear weapon as negotiating leverage, they must test it," said Quinones, who is now the Korean affairs director at the Washington-based private think-tank, International Center.

"The more I talked to my friends, the more I realized that it is possible for North Korea to have a nuclear weapon by December. It is possible they'll have a test by December. There is nothing to stop North Korea from doing this."

He said it took about six months to reprocess plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and then about six months to make a nuclear bomb, according to the daily.

As a US state department official, Quinones was involved in US talks with North Korea that led to a 1994 agreement that froze its nuclear program in exchange for light-water reactors for power generation and heavy fuel aid.

Pyongyang has however declared the agreement void amid a dispute with Washington about its nuclear ambitions.

The dispute arose last October when the United States said North Korea had admitted to running a nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium. Washington then cut off fuel aid to the energy-starved regime.

North Korea later unsealed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods from an old graphite-moderate reactor, which produces weapons-grade plutonium as a by-product.

On June 9 communist North Korea declared publicly for the first time in an official media dispatch that it was seeking nuclear weapons.

Quinones, who visited North Korea 13 times from 1992 to 1997, said that while North Korea was believed to have the technology and material to produce nuclear weapons from plutonium, the country would possibly only be able to obtain enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon in two to three years.

He added though that North Korea did not have "sophisticated" technology to produce nuclear warheads to be carried by its ballistic missiles.

Reports in Japan have said North Korea might have acquired technology to reduce the size of nuclear weapons so they can be mounted on ballistic missiles.