NKorea stops disabling reactor

2008-08-26 19:26

Seoul - North Korea said on Tuesday it has stopped disabling its nuclear reactor and will consider restoring the plutonium-producing facility in anger over Washington's failure to remove it from the US list of terror sponsors.

The North's announcement marks the emergence of the biggest hurdle yet to the communist nation's denuclearisation process under a landmark deal last year and is expected to escalate tension in the nuclear talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, the US and Russia.

Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said it suspended the disablement work at the reactor and other facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex as of August 14 because the US did not keep its promise to delist Pyongyang as a terror sponsor under last year's deal.

'State sponsor of terrorism'

"The US postponed the process of delisting the (North) as a 'state sponsor of terrorism"', the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"Now that the US breached the agreed points, the (North) is compelled to take" countermeasures, it said.

The ministry also said the country will "consider soon a step to restore" the Yongbyon nuclear facilities, but did not elaborate.

The United States reacted calmly and said it was sticking to its position.

"We've informed North Korea that we will take action to rescind its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism when it fulfils its commitment regarding verification," White House spokesperson Dana Perino said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in the West Bank city of Ramallah that North Korea "still has obligations", adding that discussions with Pyongyang were ongoing.

Removal from the terror list is one of the key concessions offered to the North in exchange for shutting down and disabling the reactor under a landmark six-nation deal reached last year.

Verification of declaration

In late June, the US announced that it would delist the North as a terror sponsor after Pyongyang turned in a long-delayed account of its nuclear programmes and blew up the reactor's cooling tower in a symbolic move to demonstrate its denuclearization commitment.

The two sides have been negotiating how to verify the nuclear declaration, with Washington insisting it would remove the North from the terror list only after Pyongyang agrees to a verification plan.

That angered Pyongyang.

North Korea began disabling the plutonium-producing facilities in November, but the process had been delayed because Pyongyang slowed the work in a row with Washington over how to declare the nuclear programmes.

South Korean and US officials have said eight of the 11 disablement measures have been finished and that when the entire disablement is completed, it would take at least a year for the North to restart the facilities.

- AP