Express News Service

NEW DELHI: US State Department officials are on a hush-hush visit to India in connection with the recent cyber attack on the Kudankulam nuclear plant, which has been traced to North Korea, it is learnt. Sources said the US expressed concern over India’s bid to play down the incident. Washington feels New Delhi should have raised the issue at the global level to expose N Korea’s intentions.

“US State Department officials are in India and had a meeting with select officials of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. They expressed unhappiness at the way India handled the cyber attack,” sources told this newspaper.

However, neither the MEA nor the US embassy in New Delhi confirmed the visit with foreign ministry officials saying they have “no such information”.

It was on October 30 the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, which runs Kudankulam, admitted to the presence of malware in one of its computers. However, it claimed none of the systems was hit.

Junior foreign minister Gen VK Singh was the first Indian minister to go on a two-day official trip to North Korea in May 2018.

India has complied with the UN sanctions and has appealed to N Korea to abide by international commitments on nuclear and missile issues. India has been raising the issue of clandestine nuclear and missile cooperation between Pak and North Korea.

The US has imposed stringent sanctions on North Korea over the communist country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme.