N Korea says blast for dam project
September 13, 2004 2:15 PM
By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) - A huge explosion in North Korea last week was a deliberate blast to pave the way for a hydro-electric dam, Pyongyang says.
Washington and Seoul have said the explosion was unlikely to have been a nuclear weapons test. South Korean media said an accident at an underground munitions depot or a weapons factory was a likely explanation for possibly two blasts.
A British minister visiting Pyongyang said late on Monday that the North Korean authorities had agreed to allow foreign envoys to visit the scene and see for themselves.
South Korea's financial markets, which can react sharply to developments in the North, had ignored the blast reports, which came as diplomats were seeking to persuade Pyongyang to return this month to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programmes.
"It was no nuclear explosion or an accident. It was a deliberate controlled detonation to demolish a mountain in the far north of the country," a BBC correspondent in Pyongyang with Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell quoted North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun as saying.
Britain's Press Association gave similar details in a pool report and China's Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry official as giving the same explanation.
Paek, who was providing the first North Korean word on the explosion, said it was part of a construction project to build a hydro-electric dam in the remote mountainous region of Ryanggang on the Chinese border.
The BBC said that when Paek was asked why North Korea had not explained earlier about the blasts he told Rammell Pyongyang had not done so because all foreign journalists were liars.
Later in the day, Rammell, the most senior British official to visit the North, told accompanying journalists that Pyongyang had agreed to let Western diplomats visit the site of the blast.
"Having asked the vice foreign minister this morning for our ambassador and other ambassadors to be allowed to visit the scene of the explosion, I am very pleased the North Koreans have agreed to the request," he said, according to a pool report to London.
Rammell added that London's envoy, David Slinn, might be able to visit the site as early as Tuesday.
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told a parliamentary committee on Monday "a peculiar cloud" and seismic activities were detected in separate areas that may be from unrelated incidents some 100 to 120 km (60 to 75 miles) apart....
Full article: http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5209955
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