FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 11, 2005
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5A
NUCLEAR STANDOFF
Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press
A South Korean newspaper reporting North Korea's nuclear weapons is seen on a subway train in Seoul, yesterday. North Korea for the first time publicly boasted yesterday it had nuclear weapons and said it would stay away from disarmament talks.
North Korea announces nuclear weapon supply
BY BURT HERMAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea boasted publicly for the first time yesterday that it has nuclear weapons and said it would stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the 2-year-old dispute.
The Bush administration called on Pyongyang to give up its atomic aspirations so life could be better for its impoverished people.
North Korea's harshly worded pronouncement posed a grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation disarmament talks.
"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The agency's report used the word "nukes" in its English-language dispatch.
Previously, U.S. negotiators said North Korean officials claimed in private talks that they had nuclear weapons and might test one. The North's U.N. envoy also said last year the country had
"weaponized" plutonium from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel rods.
But yesterday's statement was the first claim directly from North Korea's state media that it has a nuclear weapon, confirming the widely held beliefs of international experts that the country has one or two atomic bombs. North Korea is not known to have performed any nuclear tests, and it kicked out U.N. inspectors in 2002, so there is no way to verify its claims.
The United States and South Korea, the North's main rivals, played down the revelation and urged the North to return to the six-nation talks that began in 2003 and also include China, Japan and Russia. Analysts suggested the move by North Korea may be a negotiating tactic aimed at getting more compensation in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea should return to negotiations.
"The world has given them a way out and we hope they will take that way out," she said, wrapping up a trip to Europe. "The North Koreans have been told by the president of the United States that the United States has no intention of attacking or invading North Korea.
"The message is clear; give up these aspirations for nuclear weapons and you know life can be different," Rice said, adding that it was the same message Libya understood in renouncing its nuclear ambitions.
In a clear overture to North Korea to help foster the nuclear talks, Bush refrained from direct criticism of the country in last week's State of the Union address. He mentioned the North only in a single sentence, saying Washington was "working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions."
Bush previously branded the North part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"The U.S. disclosed its attempt to topple the political system in (North Korea) at any cost, threatening it with a nuclear stick," North Korea's Foreign Ministry said. "This compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by the people in (North Korea)."
administration was trying to "mislead" the world in calling for resuming the six-party talks while also seeking "regime change" in North Korea.
Still, Pyongyang yesterday seized on comments by Rice last month in which she labeled North Korea as one of the "outposts of tyranny" in the world.
The statement said the Bush
"This is nothing but a far-fetched logic of gangsters as it is a good example fully revealing the wicked nature and brazen faced double-dealing tactics of the U.S. as a master hand at plot-breeding and deception," the statement said.
South Korea urged its neighbor to rejoin the talks, and said it maintains its previously stated estimate that North Korea has enough plutonium to build one or two nuclear bombs.
"We once again urge North Korea to rejoin the six-party talks without conditions so that it can discuss whatever differences it has with the United States and other participants," said South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee Kyuhvung.
Both Rice and White House spokesman Scott McClellan played down any significance of North Korea's announcement that it has nuclear weapons.
"We remain committed to a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue with regards to North Korea," McClellan said aboard Air Force One enroute to North Carolina. "It's time to talk about how to move forward."
TSUNAMI
Images reveal seabed ruptures
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The first images yesterday of the seabed battered by the earthquake that triggered Asia's catastrophic tsunami revealed huge ruptures spanning several miles.
A British naval ship collecting data off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island produced the digital images using sonar, and they could be used to help develop a tsunami early-warning system for the Indian Ocean region.
The colored seabed maps show the 9.0-magnitude quake caused tectonic plates to clash "like the rumbling up of a carpet," said Steve Malcolm, commanding officer of the HMS Scott.
The images show "scars" more than six miles wide resulting from the Dec. 26 quake. They depict the line where the Indian tectonic plate suddenly collided with, and was pushed underneath, the Burma plate.
The maps, created with multi-beam sonar, show ridges as tall as 4,950 feet that were created over thousands of years by the slow collision of the deep, flat Indian plate and the
ragged edge of the Burma plate.
That collision has resulted in the Indian plate being gradually shoved under the edge of the Burma plate in a process known as subduction, said Russell Wynn, a marine geologist at the Southampton Oceanography Centre, which took part in the survey.
The Dec. 26 quake was caused by a sudden movement of the two plates, which in turn caused the ridge of the Burma plate to spring up about 30 to 60 feet, Wynn said. That sent water surging up and out, creating the devastating waves that menaced the region. The main collision zone was some 12,000 feet below the ocean surface.
Wynn said scars seen on the digital images were likely landslides created by sediment being loosened by the earthquake.
The epicenter of the earthquake was 24 miles below the seafloor, Wynn said.
Scientists from the Southampton Oceanography Centre in England and the British Geological Survey have been working with the crew on the HMS Scott since Jan. 26.
BAN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
for the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical department, police department and health department enforce it.
The city has issued nine citations since the ordinance went into effect in July, Corliss said. Three of those citations were issued for Coyote's and two were for Last Call.
Some bar owner sympathize with Steffes' allegations that enforcement needs improvement.
The law's provisions for enforcement are unfair and don't work, said Steve Gaudreau, owner of Quinton's Bar & Deli, 615 Massachusetts St.
Smaller fines should fall on bar owners who did not stop people from smoking in their bars, he said.
The majority of the fine for violating the smoking ban should fall on the people who are smoking, Gaudreau said.
"You can't police the crowd 100 percent of the time," Gaudreau said. "To fine a bar owner because one person is smoking out of 150 people is ridiculous. Just fining that one person seems more reasonable."
Gaudreau said he had been told police didn't have time to enforce the ban and firemen didn't have the proper training to enforce it. This meant that his employees were responsible for ensuring that nobody smoked in his bar, Gaudreau said.
"I understand the concern that if firemen tell someone to stop smoking, and that person becomes belligerent or forceful,
"To fine a bar owner because one person is smoking out of 150 people is ridiculous."
Steve Gaudreau
Owner of Quinton's Bar & Deli
Owner of Quinton's Bar & Deli
Gaudreau said that his employees had not yet had problems with enforcement because most people knew not to smoke. Quinton's has not received any citations.
unen they're not trained to deal with that," Gaudreau said. "But unfortunately, my staff isn't trained for that either."
But if bar owners are not fined enough for violations, they will not have an incentive to enforce the ban, Tony Kohake, Olathe senior, said.
And if bars don't enforce the ban, it's impractical to expect it will get enforced efficiently at all. Kohake said.
"The police can't go from bar to bar and catch each person who is smoking," Kohake said. "The only way for it to work is if each bar enforces it."
Re-evaluations of the ordinance are more likely to appear on city commission agendas with the pending municipal court trial, he said.
The commission could re-visit how the ordinance applies to appropriately ventilated areas as soon as the end of February. Corliss said the city commission may revise the ordinance.
Edited by Jesse Truesdale