Verifying North Korea's nuclear programs is going to be more of a political question than a technical one, with key American negotiators having to make a "gut call" on whether the communist state is being truthful, a U.S. nonproliferation expert said Wednesday.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of nuclear strategy and nonproliferation initiative at the New America Foundation, said the central issue will be North Korea's declaration of its suspected uranium enrichment program.

Access to operating records allows a comfortable degree of confidence for the plutonium-based program, but for uranium enrichment there is not the same kind of technical analysis available, he said at a symposium hosted by the Institute of Corean (Korean)-American Studies (ICAS) in Washington.

"I think that even if North Korea's declaration is accurate... I think the politics of the debate in the U.S. are going to be extremely difficult," Lewis said.

"(It would be) very easy if you are an opponent of the deal to say that you do not believe the uranium enrichment program has been fully accounted for." ...

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