NKorea can make own missile engines: US

US intelligence officials say North Korea has the capacity to produce its own missile engines, contradicting a report from a London-based global think tank.

North Korea likely has the ability to produce its own missile engines, and US intelligence suggests it does not need to rely on imports.

The assessment disputes a new study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies that said that the engines for a nuclear missile North Korea is developing to hit the United States likely were made in factories in Ukraine or Russia and probably obtained via black market networks.

"We have intelligence to suggest that North Korea is not reliant on imports of engines," one US intelligence official told Reuters. "Instead, we judge they have the ability to produce the engines themselves."

The US officials did not disclose any details of what underpinned the assessment on the high-performance liquid-fuelled engines, called RD-250's.

Ukraine denied that it had ever supplied defence technology to North Korea.

Another US intelligence official said that the modifications to the RD-250 that resulted in improved reliability may have relied in part on foreign scientists recruited by North Korea or been developed by North Koreans educated in Russia or elsewhere.

Ukraine is supported by the United States in its fight against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The IISS study, which coincides with tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programs, said the engines probably came from the Ukrainian Yuzhmash plant.

The IISS study is also being disputed by some leading independent nuclear weapons experts.

"It's completely wrong," asserted Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California.