Iran has started building a research reactor that could eventually produce enough plutonium for one bomb per year, ignoring calls to scrap the project, diplomats close to the United Nations said on Thursday. "Iran has laid the foundations for the research reactor at Arak," a Western diplomat close to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters on condition of anonymity. In September, the IAEA board of governors passed a resolution calling on Iran "as a further confidence-building measure, voluntarily to reconsider its decision to start construction of a research reactor modified by heavy water." Heavy-water reactors can be used to produce significant amounts of bomb-grade plutonium, which can then be extracted from the spent fuel.

North Korea’s foreign minister warned US that it would go ahead with its missile tests that were suspended in 1999, if Washington did not show sincerity and action towards Pyongyang, but at the same time stressed that it was willing to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program. In 1999, Pyongyang had declared a moratorium on missile tests after the US announced economic sanctions. The country's leader Kim Jong-il also had assured that he would suspend missile launches until 2003. North Korea reconfirmed the moratorium in Sept. 2002 under the "Pyongyang Declaration" signed by North Korea and Japan in May 2004, after North Korea fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean in 1998.