N. Korea Can Make A-Bomb, Jane’s Says

LONDON — North Korea has the material and technology to produce a small nuclear bomb, according to a report on the hard-line Communist nation published Wednesday in the authoritative Jane’s Intelligence Review.

If true, it would make North Korea a member of the world’s elite nuclear club far sooner than Western experts had estimated.

North Korea “apparently possesses the scientific, technological and industrial capability to currently produce a small, crude, enriched uranium bomb,” Joe Bermudez, an expert on the country, said in his report for Jane’s.

The article was based on extensive interviews with U.S. and foreign government officials and numerous published accounts, Jane’s said.

“Given the available evidence, there is little doubt that the primary objective of North Korea’s nuclear program has been, and continues to be, the production of nuclear weapons,” Bermudez wrote.

He said the program is of “grave concern” to East Asian nations, the United States, Soviet Union and China because of “the historically unpredictable nature of the North Korean leadership.”

Also disconcerting is North Korea’s refusal to allow the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its nuclear facilities despite signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985, Bermudez said.

Only five countries admit to having nuclear weapons: the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France and the United States.

American weapons experts say it is almost certain that Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa have already built small nuclear arsenals or have the ability to do so.