Around 20 high-ranking North Korean military officers and scientists have defected during the past six months, some of them to the United States. A report in the Australian newspaper The Weekend Australian says the North Koreans were smuggled out of the country to the West in a secret operation using embassies in China. The island state of Nauru in the Pacific played a key role.
A diplomatic solution to the issue of North Korea's nuclear programme still seems far off. It is still not clear whether talks between Pyongyang, Washington and Peking scheduled for next week will now go ahead, following reports that North Korea is trying to obtain plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Radio Netherlands 19 April 2003
