North Korea likely is closer to mounting nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles than generally reported, possibly only one or two years away, the US Congress's former top expert on the issue has concluded.

Larry Niksch, who tracked North Korea for the non-partisan US Congressional Research Service for 43 years, concludes in a new paper that the North probably would need as little as one to two years to miniaturise and mount a nuclear warhead atop its medium-range Nodong missile once it has produced enough highly enriched uranium as the warhead's core fuel.

A North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped missiles would rattle East Asia and present new policy and military challenges to the United States and its allies.

Trying to determine when Pyongyang will reach that threshold has long been a challenge for the US intelligence community.

Niksch's timeline, if correct, puts out a new marker for strategists.

Last January, then-US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the North was within five years of building an intercontinental ballistic missile that, paired with its nuclear program, would be "a direct threat" to the United States.

North Korea has staged relatively few missile tests in recent years, suggesting it is still working on perfecting the needed technologies even as it has co-operated with Iran to do so.

Its nuclear and missile capabilities are once again in the spotlight as power passes to North Korea's designated young leader, Kim Jong-un, after the December 17 death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

Pyongyang already may have produced enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for a warhead or be close to doing so, Niksch and experts such as Siegfried Hecker, the former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in interviews with Reuters.

Hecker said the North would have to conduct another nuclear test, its third, to have confidence that it had successfully miniaturized a warhead for one of its missiles.

"If the test is successful they may be able to have the capability within a couple of years," he said in an email exchange, referring to a nuclear-tipped missile.

"We simply don't know what else they have and how much HEU they can make or have made," added Hecker, who toured North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex in November 2010, his fourth visit there.

Copyright Reuters, 2011

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