According to a BBC report, South Korea's top military commander, Gen Kim Tae-young has told a South Korean parliamentary committee that North Korea has been working on building a small nuclear warhead which could be placed on existing rockets.

Gen Kim said that he believed Pyongyang had enough plutonium for 6 or 7 nuclear warheads. Previously, analysts had claimed that North Korea could have as many as 8 or 10 warheads, but these suspicions have never been confirmed. Gen Kim also said that the North had tested 2 rockets last week, firing them into open seas off the Korean peninsula.

Is North Korea upping the ante with regard to its nuclear ambitions? One can only wonder what the usual international heavy-weights will have to say about this, as well as the IAEA.