N Korea shutdown raises alarm

2005-04-18 10:38

Seoul - South Korea confirmed on Monday the shutdown of North Korea's nuclear power plant, a signal that Pyongyang could be moving to double its supply of weapons-grade plutonium.

"We are treating this matter very seriously," said Kim Sook, head of the North American affairs bureau at the South Korean foreign ministry.

"I learned that the halt to operations (at the plant) has been verified through various means," he said in an interview with a local radio station.

North Korea claimed in 2003 that it had reprocessed spent fuel rods from its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon complex, 90km north of the capital Pyongyang.

Experts said reprocessing of the 8 000 rods from the plant produced enough plutonium for six to eight nuclear bombs.

By reprocessing another batch of 8 000 rods, North Korea could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to allow it to double that number of bombs.

Selig Harrison, a US expert who visited Pyongyang earlier this month, said that senior North Korean leaders told him the country would start reprocessing the 8 000 spent fuel rods in late April.

The specialist from the Centre for International Policy in Washington said the North Koreans were no longer interested in a step-by-step elimination of their nuclear programmes in return for rewards.

Instead they would offer to freeze the production of nuclear bombs only if the United States promised not to try to topple the communist regime, Harrison was told.

The controversial reactor at Yongbyon was frozen under a 1994 bilateral deal between the United States and North Korea under which North Korea agreed to mothball an earlier nuclear programme.

Washington believes that North Korea had already diverted enough bomb-grade plutonium at that time for up to two crude nuclear devices.

The 1994 deal collapsed after Washington accused North Korea in October 2002 of running a separate programme based on enriched uranium to produce nuclear weapons.

North Korea raised the stakes by reopening the Yongbyon reactor, kicking out international monitors, and claimed it had reprocessed spent fuel.

It said it would give up its nuclear weapons drive in return for rewards but Washington refused to offer incentives.

Six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, the United States and Japan aimed at ending the North's nuclear arms ambitions have stalled after three inconclusive rounds.

North Korea declared in February that it had nuclear weapons for self-defence and would not return to talks unless the US drops its hostility.

- AFP