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N Korea invites envoy to blast site

North Korea has invited a British diplomat to visit the site of an explosion that shot a huge mushroom cloud into the sky to verify claims that it was the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project, a British envoy said yesterday.

Experts from the US and elsewhere say they don't believe Thursday's blast near the Chinese border was a nuclear test. But a US official cited indications the North is trying to conduct one.

North Korea denounced the speculation over a nuclear test as part of a "preposterous smear campaign" aimed at diverting world attention away from revelations about past South Korean nuclear activities, Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency said.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a US official said it isn't clear what happened. While the official said there isn't any reason to believe it was a nuclear test, the official also couldn't confirm the North Koreans' explanation on Monday that it was linked to construction of a hydroelectric project.

A UN official said the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors nuclear activity, had seen no signs that the explosion was a nuclear blast.

KCNA said "blastings at construction sites of hydro-power stations" had taken place.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun made the same offer to visiting British Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell.

"He gave me an explanation that it wasn't an accident, it wasn't a nuclear explosion, but in fact was a deliberate detonation of a mountain as part of a hydroelectricity pro-ject," Rammell said in Beijing after a four-day visit to the North.

North Korea told Britain's ambassador in Pyongyang, David Slinn, that he can visit the blast site along with any other foreign ambassadors in Pyongyang who want to join him, Rammell said.

Slinn hoped to organize the trip as early as yesterday, he said.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said his country would look into whether the site "is an area for constructing a hydroelectric power plant," according to Yonhap news agency.

Andrew Kennedy, head of the Asia program at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the North Korean explanation has "a ring of truth to it" and that if diplomats were allowed to take a Geiger counter, they would easily know whether a nuclear blast occurred.

"The North Koreans would know that with the intelligence and the surveillance satellites that the West has, it would be very easy to check. That is backed up by the North's agreement to allow the visiting British diplomat to go to the site and inspect it," he said.

"North Korea is usually trying to convince people that they do have a nuclear capability ... It's not in their interest to keep a nuclear test quiet," he added.

The size of the explosion and a 3km-wide mushroom cloud on the 56th anniversary of the founding of North Korea had raised speculation that it might be a nuclear test.
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