China says North Korea has 20 nuclear warheads

BEIJING — Nuclear experts in China have revealed that North Korea may have 20 nuclear warheads and could double that arsenal by next year, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The total exceeds current U.S. assessments of the secretive state's nuclear weapons.

The Chinese experts believe North Korea has a greater domestic capacity to enrich uranium than had been thought, Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford nuclear expert and former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, told the Journal.

The Chinese estimates were shared in a closed-door meeting with U.S. nuclear specialists in Beijing in February, the report said. The growing stockpile will complicate international efforts to halt Pyongyang's nuclear program, said Hecker, who attended the February meeting.

“I'm concerned that by 20, they actually have a nuclear arsenal,” he said. “The more they believe they have a fully functional nuclear arsenal and deterrent, the more difficult it's going to be to walk them back from that.”

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the revelations cast a shadow on the pending nuclear deal the United States and other world powers are negotiating with Iran to curtail that country's nuclear program. A 1994 agreement between the Clinton administration and North Korea was supposed to stop a North Korean nuclear weapons program.

North Korea has barred inspectors from many of its nuclear sites.