MORE NORTH KOREAN GAMES - AT 7:25 P.M. ET:  North Korea, after some smiles and a few nice words, seems back in the nuclear business, which will come as no shock to Urgent Agenda readers.  The question is what Washington will do about it, if anything.  North Korea's latest bluster follows by days the election of a new, left-wing government in Japan that may not be as helpful on the Korean question as was the previous government:

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday that it was in the final stage of enriching uranium, a process that would give it a second path to making a nuclear weapon.

After a series of conciliatory gestures by the North over the past month, the announcement raises the stakes in efforts by the international community to convince the reclusive state to give up its nuclear weapons programme.

"Experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase," the KCNA news agency quoted North Korea's United Nations delegation as saying in a letter to the head of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).

The North has already tested two plutonium-based nuclear devices, the one in May triggering tightened international sanctions.

The United States has long suspected that the North has a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons. Experts have said it has not developed anything near a full scale enrichment programme.

COMMENT:  The North Koreans are looking at the United States.  They see a soft president, weakened, with international problems piling up before him.  The Koreans may well calculate that they have little to fear except, maybe, an occasional scolding letter or some weak sanctions.

September 3, 2009