A rchive Date
[ 26-12-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ North Korea ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2002/12/22/8113-ap.html
North Koreans enter nuclear plant
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Wed, December 25, 2002
SEOUL (AP) - North Koreans are moving freely in and out of a nuclear power plant since removing seals installed by foreign monitors, a South Korean news agency reported Wednesday in the latest sign the North is preparing to restart the reactor.
The United States fears the plant could be used to make nuclear weapons, and has told the North not to revive it. On Tuesday, North Korea issued a fiery warning that U.S. policy was leading the region to the "brink of nuclear war."
Though there were no new activities at a reprocessing lab or a fuel rod factory early Wednesday, the South Korean news agency Yonhap said "North Koreans are freely moving in and out of the unsealed nuclear reactor" at Yongbyon. It cited an unidentified South Korean government official.
Yonhap said Wednesday the International Atomic Energy Agency had increased the number of its inspectors at the North Korean facilities from two to three. The report could not be immediately confirmed.
Under a 1994 agreement, the North Koreans are supposed to seek the agency's permission before entering the power plant.
The North's comments Tuesday were stronger than its usual anti-American rhetoric, and U.S. officials said they suspected Pyongyang was trying to goad Washington back to the negotiating table after President George W. Bush cut off oil shipments to the energy-starved country. American officials have demanded that North Korea immediately end its atomic weapons program.
The North's defence minister, Kim Il Chol, said in a report on KCNA, the North Korean news agency, that "U.S. hawks" were "pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war."
In a separate report on KCNA, North Korea said Washington's hostile policy toward it would backfire and result in "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The statement was in the Communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
Alarming U.S. officials, North Korea has swiftly taken steps toward a possible reactivation of nuclear facilities that experts believe were used to make one or two weapons in the 1990s. North Korea had agreed to freeze the facilities in the 1994 deal with the United States that brought Pyongyang economic benefits.
North Korean officials removed IAEA seals from more nuclear facilities and began repair work at a reactor that had been frozen since 1994, the United Nations agency said Tuesday. The North Koreans will need "a month or two" to make their Soviet-designed, five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon operational, said Mark Gwozdecky, chief IAEA spokesman at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.
On Tuesday, North Korea removed UN seals and surveillance cameras from a fourth nuclear facility, including a reprocessing facility that produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The move disturbed U.S. officials who say North Korea has no use for plutonium other than trying to build a nuclear bomb. There are 8,000 spent fuel rods at the facility, enough to make several atomic bombs within months.
Gwozdecky said it did not appear that the North Koreans had removed any rods from the facility.
North Korea, which has accused the United States of plotting an invasion, has said it is willing to settle the nuclear issue if Washington signs a non-aggression treaty.
Bush and South Korea's president-elect Roh Moo-hyun will exchange special envoys next month to discuss North Korea, Roh's chief spokesman, Lee Nak-yon, said Wednesday. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly is likely to visit South Korea, and Roh's envoy will return the visit, he said.
In Russia, which has maintained friendly times with the North, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov expressed concern over Pyongyang's nuclear program, saying it "negatively affects the situation on the Korean peninsula."
"In these conditions, Pyongyang's co-operation with the IAEA takes on special significance. We call on North Korea to co-operate with the agency," Losyukov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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