Washington, Apr 19: The proposed trilateral talks between the US, North Korea and China have been thrown into jeopardy over Pyongyang's "ambigious" statement over reprocessing of fuel rods. A North Korean spokesman was quoted yesterday by a English state-run news agency as saying: "we are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase." But the Korean version of the statement says, "We are successfully completing the final phase of the reprocessing operation for some 8,000 spent fuel rods."
"It is not clear exactly what (the statement) means, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. "There is some imprecision in the language about the status of the reprocessing."
The US goal in the trilateral talks set for April 23 to 25 in Beijing is to freeze North Korea's weapon programme and later try to reverse it, analysts said.
Washington seems reconciled to Pyongyang's possession of what it has - probably one or two nuclear bombs. That does not require North Korea to extract plutonium out of its 8,000 spent fuel rods. If it does, it can build half a dozen or more nuclear bombs.

The US wants no talks unless there is an assurance from North Korea that it will not extract plutonium from the 8,000 rods but the latest statements by Pyongyang are contradictory.
Boucher indicated that if Pyongyang had indeed started reprocessing, it could have serious consequences on the talks.
"We would regard reprocessing of spent fuel to extract plutonium as an extremely serious matter," he said.
Bureau Report