SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea said on Friday it would strike again at the South if a live-fire drill by Seoul on a disputed island went ahead, with an even stronger response than last month's shelling that killed four people.
North Korean official news agency KCNA issued the threat as South Korea prepared for firing drills on Yeonpyeong island near a disputed maritime border with the North for the first time since November's exchange of artillery fire.
"The strike will play out a more serious situation than on November 23 in terms of the strength and scope of the strike," KCNA said.
A leading South Korean defense analyst said he doubted the North would carry out its threat, which rattled financial markets, and South Korea's Defense Ministry said the exercise planned for December 18-21 would go ahead.
The North had said its November shelling was a response to South Korean "provocations" after an artillery battery on the island fired in what Seoul said was a routine drill.
North Korea's warning came after Seoul promised a more robust response to any further attacks on its territory. The shelling of the island was the first time since the Korean War that North Korea had attacked South Korean territory.
"They would have to be committing to a full-out war if they did that (struck again)," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, an expert on North Korea's military strategy.
"What's likely is they will do something as a face-saving action, such as firing their own artillery near the disputed waters," he said.
The Korean won currency fell slightly in offshore forward trading against the dollar, with the 1-month non-deliverable dollar/won forwards rising to as high as 1,159 soon after the news broke from around 1,155.
CHINA URGES U.S. TO PLAY CONSTRUCTIVE ROLE
China, the North's main backer, has said Pyongyang had promised restraint. China told visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg the two big powers should cooperate more in defusing tension on the Korean Peninsula.
U.S. diplomatic troubleshooter Bill Richardson is visiting Pyongyang in an effort to "reduce the tension on the Korean Peninsula.
China's top diplomat, Dai Bingguo, urged closer coordination over the Korean Peninsula during talks with Steinberg, the second most senior official in the U.S. State Department, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
Steinberg was in Beijing for three days till Friday to press China to rein in North Korea, which as well as shelling the island last month also disclosed advances in uranium enrichment that could give it a new path to making nuclear weapons.
China has avoided publicly condemning its long-time ally over the shelling and nuclear program, and instead pleaded with other powers to embrace fresh talks with North Korea.
Russia summoned the ambassadors of South Korea and the United States to express "extreme concern" and urged the two countries to halt the exercise to prevent "the further escalation of tensions," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry said in a statement that U.S. military officers were to observe the South Korean exercise.
"North Korea was called upon to display maximum restraint," the Russian statement added.
The U.S. State Department underscored the U.S. stance that South Korea had every right to conduct the exercises, but indicated that it, too, was worried.
"We are absolutely concerned about the current trajectory," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, adding that Pyongyang was responsible for raising the tensions.
"We trust that South Korea will be very cautious in terms of what it does, but that said, let's put the responsibility squarely where it lies," he said.
SEEKING NEGOTIATIONS
North Korea is seeking the restart of six-party nuclear talks with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
It wants the talks to resume without preconditions, something Washington and South Korea have ruled out because they do not want to reward Pyongyang for hostile actions.
Analysts say the North uses the threat of attacks and even nuclear conflict to win concessions such as food and economic aid at talks over its nuclear stockpile.
At the same time as the poor, reclusive country is pushing for aid, the North is also in the throes of a potential leadership succession as ailing leader Kim Jong-il grooms his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as the next ruler.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Wikileaks on Cuba: Fidel Castro 'nearly died'
Cuban leader Fidel Castro came close to death in 2006, according to the latest secret US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks.
Mr Castro almost died after suffering a perforated intestine during an internal flight, unnamed sources told US diplomats in Havana.
The illness led Mr Castro to hand power to his brother Raul, although he has since returned to public life.
The 84-year-old's health is considered a state secret in Cuba.
The Wikileaks cables, published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reveal the intense efforts made by US diplomats in Havana to find out the nature of Fidel Castro's illness and his chances of recovery.
The names of the sources of information reported in the cables have been redacted by Wikileaks, but some apparently knew people who were close to the Cuban leader, or had access to his medical records.
The details of what they say cannot be independently verified.
One cable, sent in March 2007 by the then-head of the US interests section in Havana, Michael Parmly, quotes a report by an unnamed doctor on the moment Mr Castro fell seriously ill in July 2006.
As it was a short flight there was no doctor on board and they had to land urgently once they knew of Mr Castro's bleeding. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis of the colon.
The source said Mr Castro had a perforation of the large intestine and needed surgery.
But it says he "capriciously" refused to have a colostomy, with the result that his condition deteriorated over time and he required further surgery.
"This illness is not curable and will not, in her opinion, allow him to return to leading Cuba," the report concludes.
"He won't die immediately, but he will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies."
Defiance
Further leaked cables quote other sources as saying Mr Castro was terminally ill, and examine statements by his medical team and reports of specialist drugs being brought into Cuba
But the reports of his imminent death have proved to be exaggerated.
Mr Castro has since made an apparent recovery and earlier this year returned to making speeches and appearing in public, though he has not taken back the reins of power from his brother Raul.
The former Cuban leader recently praised Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, saying the leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables had brought the US "morally, to its knees".
"Julian Assange, a man who a few months ago hardly anyone in the world had heard of, is showing that the most powerful empire in history can be defied," he wrote in an article published by Cuban state media.
The US government and its intelligence agencies have been staunch enemies of Mr Castro and the communist government in Cuba for more than half a century.
So far, all their predictions of the imminent demise of communist party rule on the island have proved false.
Mr Castro almost died after suffering a perforated intestine during an internal flight, unnamed sources told US diplomats in Havana.
The illness led Mr Castro to hand power to his brother Raul, although he has since returned to public life.
The 84-year-old's health is considered a state secret in Cuba.
The Wikileaks cables, published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reveal the intense efforts made by US diplomats in Havana to find out the nature of Fidel Castro's illness and his chances of recovery.
The names of the sources of information reported in the cables have been redacted by Wikileaks, but some apparently knew people who were close to the Cuban leader, or had access to his medical records.
The details of what they say cannot be independently verified.
One cable, sent in March 2007 by the then-head of the US interests section in Havana, Michael Parmly, quotes a report by an unnamed doctor on the moment Mr Castro fell seriously ill in July 2006.
As it was a short flight there was no doctor on board and they had to land urgently once they knew of Mr Castro's bleeding. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis of the colon.
The source said Mr Castro had a perforation of the large intestine and needed surgery.
But it says he "capriciously" refused to have a colostomy, with the result that his condition deteriorated over time and he required further surgery.
"This illness is not curable and will not, in her opinion, allow him to return to leading Cuba," the report concludes.
"He won't die immediately, but he will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies."
Defiance
Further leaked cables quote other sources as saying Mr Castro was terminally ill, and examine statements by his medical team and reports of specialist drugs being brought into Cuba
But the reports of his imminent death have proved to be exaggerated.
Mr Castro has since made an apparent recovery and earlier this year returned to making speeches and appearing in public, though he has not taken back the reins of power from his brother Raul.
The former Cuban leader recently praised Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, saying the leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables had brought the US "morally, to its knees".
"Julian Assange, a man who a few months ago hardly anyone in the world had heard of, is showing that the most powerful empire in history can be defied," he wrote in an article published by Cuban state media.
The US government and its intelligence agencies have been staunch enemies of Mr Castro and the communist government in Cuba for more than half a century.
So far, all their predictions of the imminent demise of communist party rule on the island have proved false.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Report details KLA organ snatching ring in Albania
TIRANA (Reuters) – A Council of Europe draft report gives gruesome details alleging Kosovo Albanian guerrillas loyal to now-Prime Minister Hashim Thaci harvested the organs of some captives, mainly Serbs, they killed a decade ago.
The report by Swiss senator Dick Marty, a rapporteur of the Council of Europe, is expected to be adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly and it urges Kosovo's EU-run judiciary in Kosovo to probe the charges.
Kosovo Albanians believe such information about events from the late 1990s war years was fabricated by Serbia to smear their KLA liberators. Belgrade lost control of the province, now independent, after NATO's air attack in 1999.
Marty says in the report that almost 500 people disappeared in Kosovo after NATO troops arrived. About 100 were Albanians and close to 400 non-Albanians, most of them Serbs.
Citing evidence from witnesses, the draft report says the KLA network maintained bases to keep scores of captives, select them for the suitability of organ harvesting and later killed some of them to extract organs from mid-1999 to mid-2000.
"In the months directly after the declared end of the Kosovo conflict in June 1999, members and affiliates of the KLA purportedly delivered scores of persons they had abducted into secret detention on Albanian territory," Marty's report said.
ORGANS REMOVALS
Evidence suggested, Marty added, that the organizers used
safe locations in Kukes on the Kosovo border, Rripe in the Mat region further south, and at Fushe-Kruje near the international airport. The location in Fushe-Kruje was specially built.
"It constituted a state-of-the-art reception center for the organized crime of organ trafficking. It was styled as a makeshift operating clinic, and it was the site at which some of the captives held by KLA members and affiliates had their kidneys removed against their will," Marty's report said.
Age, sex, state of health and ethnicity, with mostly Serbs targeted, determined the selection.
"Some of these captives are said to have pleaded with their captors to be spared the fate of being 'chopped into pieces,'" Marty said, citing source testimonies his team had obtained.
"The testimonies on which we based our findings spoke credibly and consistently of a methodology by which all of the captives were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before being operated on to remove one or more of their organs."
Then they shipped them to overseas clinics, part of an international black market in organ-trafficking for transplants.
Albania has denied it knew or condoned such activity and has considered the matter closed, saying the claims proved untrue. Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, who has not been allowed to investigate in Albania, has started his own investigation.
Serbia could have an eyewitness, sources said.
Claims the KLA had engaged in organ trafficking emerged in April 2008 in the memoirs of the ex-chief war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, who said she had been prevented from properly investigating alleged atrocities by the KLA.
Xhavit Haliti, a senior official of Thaci's PDK party mentioned in the report as one KLA commander active in Albania, said he believed Marty's report was politically motivated, but welcomed an investigation to shed light on the matter.
"Smuggling organs is a very serious accusation, which I think should be verified. I believe it is impossible to imagine that the KLA had a mechanism (for involvement in) it. It is impossible. Professionally it was impossible," Xhaviti said.
The report by Swiss senator Dick Marty, a rapporteur of the Council of Europe, is expected to be adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly and it urges Kosovo's EU-run judiciary in Kosovo to probe the charges.
Kosovo Albanians believe such information about events from the late 1990s war years was fabricated by Serbia to smear their KLA liberators. Belgrade lost control of the province, now independent, after NATO's air attack in 1999.
Marty says in the report that almost 500 people disappeared in Kosovo after NATO troops arrived. About 100 were Albanians and close to 400 non-Albanians, most of them Serbs.
Citing evidence from witnesses, the draft report says the KLA network maintained bases to keep scores of captives, select them for the suitability of organ harvesting and later killed some of them to extract organs from mid-1999 to mid-2000.
"In the months directly after the declared end of the Kosovo conflict in June 1999, members and affiliates of the KLA purportedly delivered scores of persons they had abducted into secret detention on Albanian territory," Marty's report said.
ORGANS REMOVALS
Evidence suggested, Marty added, that the organizers used
safe locations in Kukes on the Kosovo border, Rripe in the Mat region further south, and at Fushe-Kruje near the international airport. The location in Fushe-Kruje was specially built.
"It constituted a state-of-the-art reception center for the organized crime of organ trafficking. It was styled as a makeshift operating clinic, and it was the site at which some of the captives held by KLA members and affiliates had their kidneys removed against their will," Marty's report said.
Age, sex, state of health and ethnicity, with mostly Serbs targeted, determined the selection.
"Some of these captives are said to have pleaded with their captors to be spared the fate of being 'chopped into pieces,'" Marty said, citing source testimonies his team had obtained.
"The testimonies on which we based our findings spoke credibly and consistently of a methodology by which all of the captives were killed, usually by a gunshot to the head, before being operated on to remove one or more of their organs."
Then they shipped them to overseas clinics, part of an international black market in organ-trafficking for transplants.
Albania has denied it knew or condoned such activity and has considered the matter closed, saying the claims proved untrue. Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, who has not been allowed to investigate in Albania, has started his own investigation.
Serbia could have an eyewitness, sources said.
Claims the KLA had engaged in organ trafficking emerged in April 2008 in the memoirs of the ex-chief war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, who said she had been prevented from properly investigating alleged atrocities by the KLA.
Xhavit Haliti, a senior official of Thaci's PDK party mentioned in the report as one KLA commander active in Albania, said he believed Marty's report was politically motivated, but welcomed an investigation to shed light on the matter.
"Smuggling organs is a very serious accusation, which I think should be verified. I believe it is impossible to imagine that the KLA had a mechanism (for involvement in) it. It is impossible. Professionally it was impossible," Xhaviti said.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Sweden appeals UK granting bail for Julian Assange
LONDON – A British judge granted Julian Assange bail on Tuesday but the WikiLeaks founder will remain in custody for at least another 48 hours after Swedish prosecutors said they would challenge the decision.
Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has already spent a week in a U.K. jail following his surrender to police in a Swedish sex-crimes investigation. He denies any wrongdoing and his lawyers say he plans to fight Sweden's extradition request.
Britain's High Court will hear the Swedish appeal, although it wasn't immediately clear when.
Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens said his client's relief at the bail decision had already evaporated, calling it "unfortunate" that "the Swedes won't abide by the umpire's decision."
"They clearly will not spare any expense but to keep Mr. Assange in jail," Stephens told journalists outside the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. "This is really turning into a show trial."
Celebrity supporters in the court and pro-WikiLeaks protesters outside the building had earlier cheered Judge Howard Riddle's decision to free Assange.
Assange's mother Christine, who was flown to Britain by Australian media outlets, watched the hearing nervously from the public gallery but gave a huge smile as the judge announced his decision.
"I just want to thank everyone who's turned up to show their support and who's taken an interest," Christine Assange said.
Under the ruling Tuesday, Assange would be subject to strict bail conditions. Stephens said the court was demanding 200,000 pounds ($316,000) in bail up front before Assange could be freed. He would also have to wear an electronic tag, live at a registered address, report to police every evening and observe two four-hour curfews each day.
Several wealthy supporters have put up a total of 240,000 pounds ($380,000) as a guarantee for Assange, his lawyers said.
Assange's next court appearance was set for Jan. 11, ahead of a full hearing on Feb. 7 and 8.
Lawyer Gemma Lindfield, acting for Sweden, had asked the court to deny Assange bail because the allegations in Sweden were serious, Assange had only weak ties to Britain and he had enough money "to abscond."
At a court hearing last week, Lindfield said Assange is accused of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion. She told the court one woman had accused Assange of pinning her down and refusing to use a condom on Aug. 14 in Stockholm. That woman also accused of Assange of molesting her.
A second woman has accused Assange of having sex with her without a condom while he was a guest at her Stockholm home and she was asleep.
In Sweden, a person who has sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can be convicted of rape and sentenced to up to six years in prison.
Assange denies the allegations and has not been charged in Sweden. His lawyers say the allegations stem from a dispute over "consensual but unprotected sex."
Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has already spent a week in a U.K. jail following his surrender to police in a Swedish sex-crimes investigation. He denies any wrongdoing and his lawyers say he plans to fight Sweden's extradition request.
Britain's High Court will hear the Swedish appeal, although it wasn't immediately clear when.
Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens said his client's relief at the bail decision had already evaporated, calling it "unfortunate" that "the Swedes won't abide by the umpire's decision."
"They clearly will not spare any expense but to keep Mr. Assange in jail," Stephens told journalists outside the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. "This is really turning into a show trial."
Celebrity supporters in the court and pro-WikiLeaks protesters outside the building had earlier cheered Judge Howard Riddle's decision to free Assange.
Assange's mother Christine, who was flown to Britain by Australian media outlets, watched the hearing nervously from the public gallery but gave a huge smile as the judge announced his decision.
"I just want to thank everyone who's turned up to show their support and who's taken an interest," Christine Assange said.
Under the ruling Tuesday, Assange would be subject to strict bail conditions. Stephens said the court was demanding 200,000 pounds ($316,000) in bail up front before Assange could be freed. He would also have to wear an electronic tag, live at a registered address, report to police every evening and observe two four-hour curfews each day.
Several wealthy supporters have put up a total of 240,000 pounds ($380,000) as a guarantee for Assange, his lawyers said.
Assange's next court appearance was set for Jan. 11, ahead of a full hearing on Feb. 7 and 8.
Lawyer Gemma Lindfield, acting for Sweden, had asked the court to deny Assange bail because the allegations in Sweden were serious, Assange had only weak ties to Britain and he had enough money "to abscond."
At a court hearing last week, Lindfield said Assange is accused of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion. She told the court one woman had accused Assange of pinning her down and refusing to use a condom on Aug. 14 in Stockholm. That woman also accused of Assange of molesting her.
A second woman has accused Assange of having sex with her without a condom while he was a guest at her Stockholm home and she was asleep.
In Sweden, a person who has sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can be convicted of rape and sentenced to up to six years in prison.
Assange denies the allegations and has not been charged in Sweden. His lawyers say the allegations stem from a dispute over "consensual but unprotected sex."
Nigeria considers deal to drop Cheney charges: officials
LAGOS (AFP) – Nigeria will consider a deal to drop charges against US ex-vice president Dick Cheney and his former company Halliburton over a bribery scandal after "fruitful" weekend talks, officials said Monday.
Asked whether the charges were being dropped after the negotiations in London, prosecutor Godwin Obla said, "The possibility is there."
However, he would not provide details on the talks he said included high-ranking officials from energy firm Halliburton. Government officials must approve any settlement, said Obla.
"We had fruitful negotiations in London," he added.
A spokesman for Nigeria's anti-graft agency also refused to comment in detail on the talks, saying only that those involved in the case had offered to pay fines to avoid prosecution.
"There is the need for the team from London to brief the government," said Femi Babafemi.
Halliburton officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Nigerian authorities charged Cheney and several others last week with 16 counts over a bribery scandal related to the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant. Cheney was head of Halliburton before becoming US vice president serving president George W. Bush following 2000 elections.
Others charged included Halliburton CEO David Lesar, as well as Halliburton Inc., its former subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), former KBR head Albert "Jack" Stanley and that firm's current leader William Utt.
The case involves an alleged 182 million dollar cash-for-contract scandal over 10 years until 2005 over construction of the liquefied natural gas plant in southern Nigeria.
Halliburton has denied involvement in the allegations, and a spokesman for Cheney has dismissed the accusations against him as baseless.
The consortium involved in the gas plant, TSKJ, was also charged.
US authorities said last year that Halliburton and KBR had agreed to pay 177 million dollars to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States over the scandal.
KBR agreed to pay a further 402 million dollars to settle criminal charges brought by the US Justice Department.
Asked whether the charges were being dropped after the negotiations in London, prosecutor Godwin Obla said, "The possibility is there."
However, he would not provide details on the talks he said included high-ranking officials from energy firm Halliburton. Government officials must approve any settlement, said Obla.
"We had fruitful negotiations in London," he added.
A spokesman for Nigeria's anti-graft agency also refused to comment in detail on the talks, saying only that those involved in the case had offered to pay fines to avoid prosecution.
"There is the need for the team from London to brief the government," said Femi Babafemi.
Halliburton officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Nigerian authorities charged Cheney and several others last week with 16 counts over a bribery scandal related to the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant. Cheney was head of Halliburton before becoming US vice president serving president George W. Bush following 2000 elections.
Others charged included Halliburton CEO David Lesar, as well as Halliburton Inc., its former subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), former KBR head Albert "Jack" Stanley and that firm's current leader William Utt.
The case involves an alleged 182 million dollar cash-for-contract scandal over 10 years until 2005 over construction of the liquefied natural gas plant in southern Nigeria.
Halliburton has denied involvement in the allegations, and a spokesman for Cheney has dismissed the accusations against him as baseless.
The consortium involved in the gas plant, TSKJ, was also charged.
US authorities said last year that Halliburton and KBR had agreed to pay 177 million dollars to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States over the scandal.
KBR agreed to pay a further 402 million dollars to settle criminal charges brought by the US Justice Department.
S.African president says cartoon defamed him
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's president is suing over a newspaper cartoon that depicted him preparing to rape a blindfolded woman depicting justice.
Eric van der Berg, a lawyer for the Sunday Times, said Tuesday that notice had arrived at the paper's Johannesburg offices a day earlier.
The cartoon caused a storm when the Times published it in 2008, but President Jacob Zuma had not followed up on threats to sue until now.
Zuma is claiming 4 million rand (about $587,000) for humiliation and degradation, and another 1 million rand ($147,000) for damage to his reputation.
Prosecutors dropped corruption charges Zuma had been facing before he took office in 2009. He also had been acquitted of rape charges in 2006.
Eric van der Berg, a lawyer for the Sunday Times, said Tuesday that notice had arrived at the paper's Johannesburg offices a day earlier.
The cartoon caused a storm when the Times published it in 2008, but President Jacob Zuma had not followed up on threats to sue until now.
Zuma is claiming 4 million rand (about $587,000) for humiliation and degradation, and another 1 million rand ($147,000) for damage to his reputation.
Prosecutors dropped corruption charges Zuma had been facing before he took office in 2009. He also had been acquitted of rape charges in 2006.
South Korea suspects North has more uranium sites
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea believes that the North has been secretly enriching uranium at new locations outside its main nuclear site, the country's foreign minister said Friday, declining to say how many sites there were.
Earlier, a South Korean newspaper cited an unnamed intelligence official as saying that the North was enriching uranium at three or four sites in addition to its main nuclear site in Yongbyon.
"It is a report based on what is still intelligence and let me just say that we have been following this issue for some time," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told a press briefing on Tuesday when asked about it.
Kim reiterated South Korean demands that China, the reclusive North's backer, exercise greater influence on its ally "with a clearer voice."
Uranium enrichment could give the North a second source of fissile material for weapons on top of its plutonium production program at the Soviet-era nuclear program at Yongbyon, which was frozen under a now-defunct international disarmament deal.
The report of additional uranium enrichment facilities came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chided North Korea over its nuclear program and condemned an artillery attack on a South Korean island that killed four people last month.
Concern over the scope of North Korea's nuclear program grew after U.S. nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker toured the Yongbyon site in November, where he saw hundreds of centrifuges and was said to have been "stunned" by the sophistication of the program.
Later that month, North Korea launched an artillery barrage against a South Korean island in what Pyongyang says are disputed waters, triggering concern about a potential conflict that could draw in the United States and China.
Although tension has subsided, Seoul has staged a series of military drills that at one stage involved a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Monday, South Korea launched a new series of live-firing drills at sea, although these are far away from the so-called Northern Limit Line, the maritime boundary between the countries.
Earlier, a South Korean newspaper cited an unnamed intelligence official as saying that the North was enriching uranium at three or four sites in addition to its main nuclear site in Yongbyon.
"It is a report based on what is still intelligence and let me just say that we have been following this issue for some time," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told a press briefing on Tuesday when asked about it.
Kim reiterated South Korean demands that China, the reclusive North's backer, exercise greater influence on its ally "with a clearer voice."
Uranium enrichment could give the North a second source of fissile material for weapons on top of its plutonium production program at the Soviet-era nuclear program at Yongbyon, which was frozen under a now-defunct international disarmament deal.
The report of additional uranium enrichment facilities came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chided North Korea over its nuclear program and condemned an artillery attack on a South Korean island that killed four people last month.
Concern over the scope of North Korea's nuclear program grew after U.S. nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker toured the Yongbyon site in November, where he saw hundreds of centrifuges and was said to have been "stunned" by the sophistication of the program.
Later that month, North Korea launched an artillery barrage against a South Korean island in what Pyongyang says are disputed waters, triggering concern about a potential conflict that could draw in the United States and China.
Although tension has subsided, Seoul has staged a series of military drills that at one stage involved a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Monday, South Korea launched a new series of live-firing drills at sea, although these are far away from the so-called Northern Limit Line, the maritime boundary between the countries.
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