Warning images at nuclear site spark fears of a second test

Condoleezza Rice

SEOUL - United States spy satellites have detected activity near North Korea's nuclear site that may signal preparations for another test.

NBC television said spy satellites had detected people and trucks near the site of last week's blast.

An intelligence official in Washington said: "US intelligence is not ruling out the possibility of North Korea conducting another nuclear test. But there isn't any evidence one is imminent."

In Seoul, a Government official said South Korea was also aware of signs its communist neighbour could be preparing to carry out another nuclear test and was staying on alert.

Japan's Foreign Minister, Taro Aso, said he was aware of the reports but could not disclose details.

Asian stock markets twitched nervously, with Japan and South Korea slipping into the red amid US warnings that further measures would be taken following a United Nations Security Council resolution that imposed sanctions on Pyongyang.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said as he arrived for talks in Seoul he wanted to make it clear that North Korea would "pay a very, very high price for this type of reckless behaviour".

The US Government has confirmed that the October 9 explosion, which prompted worldwide condemnation, was a nuclear explosion as Pyongyang claimed.

"Analysis of air samples collected on October 11, 2006, detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion," the Director of National Intelligence, John D. Negroponte, said.

The New York Times said the explosion was probably fuelled not by uranium but by plutonium harvested from North Korea's small, mothballed nuclear reactor.

Its report, which quoted unnamed Administration and intelligence officials, suggests fears that North Korea had developed a uranium programme with equipment and know-how from Pakistan were unfounded.

Meanwhile, Japanese news reports said China, North Korea's closest ally and the least enthusiastic about sanctions, was halting some remittances to Pyongyang.

Sources quoted by South Korean journalists said it did not look as if the Chinese Government was ordering banks to crack down, but rather that the banks had started doing so on their own.

China's worry that tough action could provoke a collapse of its impoverished and highly militarised ally had prompted concern it would not enforce the sanctions.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on the eve of a trip to the region, dismissed the scepticism.

"I don't think they would have voted for a resolution that they did not intend to carry through on."

Dr Rice is due in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Moscow this week to try to cement a unified approach to North Korea.

- REUTERS