WASHINGTON  – The United States says North Korea’s use of more nuclear fuel for weapons violates the North’s past commitments at international disarmament talks.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Tuesday that the Obama administration is focused on getting back to stalled six-nation nuclear talks.

He says that “reprocessing plutonium is contrary to North Korea’s own commitments” at those negotiations and violates United Nations resolutions.

North Korea’s official news agency says the country had finished reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods. The North has also warned Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing nuclear arsenal.

WASHINGTON  – Five months after President Barack Obama, with great fanfare, called for a world free of nuclear weapons, a crucial step toward that goal is running into resistance.

There is little indication Obama will have the votes he needs for a cornerstone of his nonproliferation efforts: Senate ratification of a nuclear test ban treaty. If Obama can’t get the treaty approved, he probably will have a hard time persuading the rest of the world to rein in nuclear weapon programs.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the Obama administration needs to “work faster and harder” to build support in the Senate.

The absence of progress comes as a backdrop to the special U.N. session to be chaired by Obama later this month. The summit Sept. 24 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial session will seek broad consensus on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Political realities have made focusing on the test ban treaty difficult. Obama’s top priorities these days are passing a massive health care overhaul and overcoming violence in Afghanistan. On arms control, his administration is now focused on another goal: securing a successor to a bilateral treaty with Russia that expires in December.

The treaty with Russia would amount to a small step toward the goal of a nuclear-free world that Obama outlined in April in a sweeping speech before a crowd of 20,000 in Prague. In the same speech, he promised to focus on the test ban treaty.

“My administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification,” he said.

The administration says it is now working behind the scenes to build congressional support for the test ban treaty.

“We are pushing very hard on all fronts,” White House spokesman Mike Hammer said.

But supporters of that goal outside the administration say they have not seen evidence of urgency.

“If this pace continues, there is little chance he will achieve the goals he outlined,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of the San Francisco-based Ploughshares Fund, which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Negotiated in the 1990s, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty specified 44 nuclear-capable countries that must give formal approval before it can take effect. Eight countries besides the United States have yet to ratify the treaty: China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan. In 1999, during the Clinton administration, the Senate rejected ratification overwhelmingly, with all but three Republicans voting against.

Many countries see ratification of the treaty as a test of U.S. commitment to phase out nuclear weapons.

If the Senate doesn’t ratify it, Obama could have difficulty persuading countries to support other goals, such as strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at a review conference in May. The administration also wants a treaty to prohibit further production of weapons-grade nuclear material.

The White House says it already has achieved goodwill because other countries have seen that the U.S. is committed to reducing the world’s nuclear weapons.

“We have heard from many countries that President Obama’s ambitious nuclear agenda and multilateral approach have created a very positive international climate and goodwill for strengthening global nonproliferation efforts and advancing arms control,” Hammer said.

The administration needs 67 votes in the 100-member Senate to ratify the test ban treaty, which means it will need support from some of the 40 Republicans. No Republican has yet declared support, and key Republicans remain skeptical.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a well-regarded arms control and nonproliferation expert, recently told The Associated Press that the administration should build its case and wait at least until the second half of 2010 to push for a vote. But some supporters say that will be too close to congressional elections in November, and they worry that after that Obama may not have the large Democratic majority he now enjoys.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who opposes deep reductions in arsenals and led opposition to the 1999 vote on the test ban treaty, remains opposed. He believes a test ban would constrain the United States and undermine its technological superiority. Kyl and other opponents also say it will be difficult to verify whether other countries are conducting secret tests and to ensure that the U.S. arsenal can be maintained and improved without testing.

The administration argues that technological advances, including the capability of computer simulation, have made testing unnecessary and have also made it easier to detect tests in other countries. It has commissioned a National Academy of Sciences report on how to maintain the arsenal and an intelligence estimate on detecting nuclear explosions. The administration hopes the reports, expected early next year, will help win ratification. Kyl told the AP he believes he can defeat Obama’s push for the treaty.

“I think they are dead set on ratifying it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it is going to happen.”

The resistance comes as the administration is already deep into negotiations with Russian counterparts to finish a follow-on agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December. The administration hopes ratification of that treaty will give the issue momentum.

Prospects look much better for that treaty, with some Republicans already on board. Kyl said he could support it if the administration backs funding to modernize nuclear stockpiles and infrastructure.

In a dramatic break from previous policy, the United States will join direct talks between U.N. and European powers and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program, the State Department announced Wednesday.

TOKYO – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used her first overseas trip to declare a new era in relations with Asia, seeking a more global framework of cooperation on common threats like financial instability, nuclear proliferation and climate change.

But the protracted issue of reining in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions cast a long shadow as Clinton opened a weeklong tour of Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China in Tokyo.

“I have come to Asia on my first trip as secretary of state to convey that America’s relationships across the Pacific are indispensable to addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the 21st century,” she said.

“We will be looking for ways to collaborate on issues that go beyond just our mutual concerns to really addressing global concerns,” Clinton said at a ceremony to commemorate the arrival of the first secretary of state ever to make Japan their first overseas stop.

Yet Clinton’s message was in danger of being overshadowed by a surge in bellicose rhetoric from North Korea, which just hours before vowed to press ahead with test-firing what wary neighboring governments, particularly Japan and South Korea, believe is a long-range missile. Japan, with an unpopular government and struggling with deep economic woes, is particularly jittery at the moment and Clinton aims to reassure the country of its importance in the international arena.

“The bilateral relationship between the United States and Japan is a cornerstone in our efforts around the world,” she said. On Tuesday, she is expected to announce that she will send a special U.S. envoy to a Japanese-hosted donors conference for Pakistan. In addition to meeting with top government officials and members of the opposition, Clinton will sign an agreement to move about 8,000 of the 50,000 Marines on the island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

But, North Korea looms large over her visit. She has promised to meet with the families of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. “We do want to press the North Koreans to be more forthcoming with information,” she said en route to Tokyo.

Last week, she had warned North Korea against any “provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric” amid signs the Stalinist nation was preparing to test fire a missile capable of reaching the western United States.

But on Monday, the 67th birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang claimed it has the right to “space development” – a term it has used in the past to disguise a missile test as a satellite launch. When North Korea test-fired a long-range missile in 1998, it claimed to have put a satellite into orbit.

On Sunday, Clinton said told reporters aboard her plane that North Korea needs to live up to commitments to dismantle its nuclear programs, saying Washington is willing to normalize ties with it in return for nuclear disarmament.

“The North Koreans have already agreed to dismantling,” she said. “We expect them to fulfill the obligations that they entered into.”

She also implicitly criticized the Bush administration for abandoning the so-called 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, reached during President Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, which called for the North to give up its plutonium-based weapons program.

The framework collapsed when the Bush team accused Pyongyang of maintaining a separate highly enriched uranium program, about which Secretary Clinton said there was still great debate. As a result, she said, the North had restarted and accelerated its plutonium program, allowing it to build a nuclear device that it had detonated in 2006.