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North Korea makes plutonium threat
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said on Tuesday that it had stopped disabling its main nuclear complex, and threatened to restore facilities there that the North has used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.For months, U.S. experts and North Korean engineers have been disabling key facilities at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, in a move that temporarily shut down the North's only known source of plutonium. If the North rebuilds the facilities, it would nullify a major foreign policy achievement of President Bush. North Korea often issues strident warnings as a negotiating tactic. Nonetheless, the latest declaration dimmed Mr. Bush's hopes of achieving a breakthrough in the North's nuclear disarmament before he leaves office in January. "We have decided to immediately suspend disabling our nuclear facilities," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the state-run news agency, KCNA. "This measure has been effective on Aug. 14 and related parties have been notified of it." The spokesman accused Washington of not keeping its promise to take the North off a terrorism blacklist. The United States first wants North Korea to agree to a comprehensive method of checking whether it withheld information in a report on its past nuclear activities. Work started at Yongbyon late last year to disable a nuclear reactor, along with a factory that produces fuel for the reactor and a laboratory that can extract plutonium from spent fuel rods unloaded from the reactor. The North demolished the reactor's cooling tower in June. The North would need at least a year to restart the disabled facilities, experts said. Disabling the complex does not meet Washington's ultimate goal of dismantling it. The United States wants full access by inspectors to all suspected nuclear sites in the secretive Communist country to ensure that there are no hidden nuclear assets. The North bristled at this demand. "The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in our country as it pleases, just as it did in Iraq," the North Korean spokesman said. He said North Korea was still technically at war with the United States because the 1950-53 Korean War had ended only in a cease-fire. He added that asking the North to give up its nuclear programs while it was not allowed similar inspections in South Korea, to make sure that there are no U.S. nuclear weapons there, amounted to "a gangster's demand." The North has sought for years to have Washington remove Pyongyang from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. If removed, the impoverished North would be able to benefit from cheap international finance. A longer-term goal for the North is to sign a peace treaty with Washington. Many experts say the North will not give up its nuclear weapons until it reaches a peace treaty. Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Jerusalem, said he had no immediate comment on the North Korean report, according to Reuters. Posted by: Steve 2008-08-26 |
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