It did not win backing for new anti-proliferation obligations, such as a legally binding test ban or for an end to the further production of fissile uranium or plutonium for bombs.
ECONOMIST: Nuclear proliferation in South Asia: The power of nightmares | The
The reference to a test of a "higher level" could suggest North Korea has reached a point where it can test a weapon made from highly enriched uranium, rather than the plutonium fissile material used in its two previous tests.
North Korea is thought to have enough plutonium-based fissile material for as many as a dozen small bombs.
Crucially, Iraq has lacked fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium).
Yet it is openly working on missiles that could deliver one and on the techniques that could produce sufficiently enriched uranium or else plutonium for a weapon's fissile core.
North Korea is now boasting that it has completed experiments to enrich uranium, giving it potentially a second stream of fissile material (it has already tested two plutonium-based bombs).
In the talks leading up to the July deal, America had encouraged India to cap voluntarily its production of fissile material highly-enriched uranium and plutonium for bombs as the official nuclear five have done.
Its earlier plutonium production is thought to have produced enough fissile material for at least a couple of bombs, before it was frozen under a 1994 deal that involved compensation in the form of oil deliveries, chiefly from America, and the provision of two western-designed nuclear-power reactors, chiefly by South Korea and Japan.
If its clandestine uranium-enrichment program has made strides, Pyongyang could demonstrate that it will gain access to a far larger pool of fissile material than simply its limited supply of weapons-grade plutonium.
Acquiring nuclear weapons requires three elements: fissile material (such as highly enriched uranium, HEU, or plutonium), a delivery system and a warhead.
If the latest threats are carried out, the plutonium and uranium enrichment programs could each produce one or two weapons' worth of fissile material a year, and maybe more, depending on the size of hidden enrichment plants.
It also expelled the weapons inspectors who were monitoring its plutonium-laden spent fuel rods and a reactor capable of producing more that can be reprocessed into fissile material for nuclear bombs.
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