North Korea operating 3-4 more uranium sites

North Korea has been secretly  enriching uranium that could be used to build nuclear weapons  at three or four undisclosed locations, a South Korean  intelligence official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The facilities are in addition to the one at the North's  main nuclear site in Yongbyon that was shown to a U.S. expert  last month and that had more than 1,000 centrifuges, which   officials there reportedly said were operational.

Uranium enrichment could give the North a second source of  fissile material for weapons on top of its plutonium  production programme at the Soviet-era nuclear programme at  Yongbyon, which was frozen under a now-defunct international  disarmament deal.

"The uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon that the  North disclosed to U.S. nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker is not  among the three or four South Korea and the U.S. have  established to be in existence," the unnamed official was  quoted as saying by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

"We have established that the uranium enrichment tests  that the North has been conducting for some time are at  separate locations," the official said.

A South Korean government spokesman declined to comment on  the report, which came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei  Lavrov chided North Korea over its nuclear programme and  condemned an artillery attack on a South Korean island that  killed four people last month. [ID:nLDE6BC23N]

Hecker, who toured the Yongbyon site in November, said the  world should take the threat from the North's uranium  enrichment programme seriously but added there may be a motive  other than to quickly get bombs-grade fissile material.

North Korea has used its nuclear programme to sign two  deals that were meant to compensate Pyongyang for ending it.  Officials and experts say pursuit of nuclear arms was the  impoverished state's most effective bargaining chip against  regional powers.

Talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear arms programme  in return for massive economic aid have been stalled for two  years after the North rejected a regime of intrusive  inspections.

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