WASHINGTON: A Pentagon spy agency report concluded that North Korea likely has a nuclear bomb that can be launched on a missile, but US defense and intelligence officials cast doubt on Pyongyang’s atomic weapons capabilities.
Illustrating the high stakes surrounding the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, a study by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency stoked fears that North Korea could be closer to being able to launch a nuclear missile. The secret assessment, a part of which was mistakenly marked as unclassified and revealed at a congressional hearing on Thursday, said the agency had “moderate confidence” that North Korea possessed nuclear weapons that could be fitted onto ballistic missiles.
It was the first time such an evaluation has been made public. The report said any such North Korean missile would probably be unreliable.
The evaluation, dated last month, was revealed by Republican Representative Doug Lamborn as he questioned senior Pentagon officials about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program during a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
“DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles, however the reliability will be low,” said Lamborn. He was quoting from a DIA report entitled “Dynamic Threat Assessment 8099: North Korea Nuclear Weapons Program (March 2013).”
US officials and South Korea sought to play down the DIA evaluation.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said, “It would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage.”
James Clapper, the country’s senior intelligence official, warned that the assessment was not necessarily shared by the wider U.S. intelligence community. “I would add that the statement read by the Member is not an Intelligence Community assessment. Moreover, North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile,” Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement. But the release of part of the DIA report will likely raise tension on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea has stationed as many as five medium-range missiles on its east coast. (PTI)