International
North Korea seeks to break into the US presidential elections with its uranium centrifuges
By showing for the first time its facilities to manufacture fuel for nuclear bombs this Friday, North Korea is positioned to acquire prominence in the campaign for the presidential elections in the United States while the fear increases that it will soon carry out a large-scale weapons test.
It is a forceful gesture on the part of the regime of Kim Jong-un, which these days visited a plant full of cascades of uranium centrifuges – apparently more advanced than initially estimated by the experts – and ordered to increase the number of these devices “to exponentially increase the number of nuclear weapons.”
These are some keys to try to decipher this calculated message that Pyongyang – which since 2019 has refused to resume the dialogue on disarmament – has decided to issue with just over seven weeks to go for the Americans to elect a new president.
A gloomy uranium enrichment program
Few details are known about how, where and how much uranium is capable of enriching North Korea, as well as the level of concentration of isotopes of the resulting material (the higher the concentration of uranium-235, the more fligible the fuel of the pump).
Until now, North Korea had only shown in 2010 some facilities at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center (about 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang) to the American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who estimated that the place housed about 2,000 gas centrifuges – a more outdated model than the one shown on Friday – to produce low-enrichment uranium.
Intelligence services and analysts assume that the regime has at least another processing center in Kangson, on the outskirts of the North Korean capital.
It is this Kangson enclosure that is believed to have been shown by the North Korean media (which do not mention the location of the plant), since they claim that Kim Jong-un visited the surface under construction for new centrifuges, something that agrees with a recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that warns that an annex is being built in this complex located southwest of Pyongyang.
The chosen moment
The vast majority of experts believe that North Korea has chosen to show its centrifuges a few weeks before the US elections to regain prominence at a time when its weapons programs did not come to light even once in this week’s debate between candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as they did not do in June between Trump and Joe Biden.
Although North Korea is not an issue that currently conditions the vote of the Americans, the message that Pyongyang has sent today is that it will be an issue that will require attention from those who inherit the presidency from Biden.
“For Trump the message is ‘after the fiasco of (the summit of) Hanoi our atomic program goes ahead. If you want to stop it, you will have to sit down and negotiate.’ And for Harris it’s a bit the same; ‘Biden’s policy has failed, you’ll see if you want to sit down and negotiate,’” Ramón Pacheco Pardo, director of the chair on politics on the Korean peninsula at the Free University of Brussels, explains to EFE.
Pacheco Pardo is one of those who believe that Pyongyang is willing to resume dialogue to lower sanctions or achieve a security agreement, but in terms different from those of 2019 in Hanoi, since today’s announcement endorses what Pyongyang has been saying in recent years: that there is no longer any possibility of him abandoning nuclear weapons.
What to expect in the coming weeks
Seoul and Washington and different experts have warned in recent weeks about the possibility of Pyongyang choosing to carry out just – before or after the presidential elections in the US – important weapons of mass destruction tests to get the attention of the new tenant of the White House.
It could be the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), possibly equipped with a multiple and independent re-entry vehicle (like the one tested in June), to show once again that North Korea can theoretically reach the US. This possibility charges integers after Pyongyang showed a new and impressive 12-axle mobile erector shuttle (TEL) last week.
A nuclear test now seems a little more unlikely, not only because it is something that can always anger China and Russia (which support the lifting of sanctions on Pyongyang), but because the damage caused by the monsoon in the accesses to the remote test center of Punggye-ri (northeast of the country) and recently detected by the satellites will require important repairs in the coming weeks.
International
Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.
“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.
“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.
Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
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