news North Korea vows to restart nuclear reactor, end talks after UN censure

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North Korea vows to restart nuclear reactor, end talks after UN censure


Tue Apr 14, 3:32 PM




By Hyung-Jin Kim, The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea vowed Tuesday to restart its nuclear reactor and to boycott international disarmament talks for good in retaliation for the United Nations Security Council's condemnation of its rocket launch.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that North Korea ordered the immediate expulsion of its inspectors and told the UN nuclear watchdog it was reactivating all of its nuclear facilities.
North Korea told inspectors to remove seals and cameras from its Yongbyon nuclear site and leave the country as quickly as possible, an IAEA statement said.
Pyongyang informed the IAEA it was "immediately ceasing all co-operation," the statement said.
"The (North) also informed the IAEA that it has decided to reactivate all facilities and go ahead with the reprocessing of spent fuel," it said.
The vow to restart its nuclear reactor and boycott international disarmament talks was a serious step in the wrong direction, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
North Korea must "cease its provocative threats" and respect the will of the international community, which won't accept the communist country unless it abandons what the White House calls its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Gibbs said.
Russia, voicing regret over the move, urged Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table. Its Foreign Ministry called the UN statement "legitimate and well-balanced," and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said all sides must stick to the disarmament process. China, North Korea's main ally, appealed for calm.
All 15 members of the Security Council, including Beijing and Moscow, agreed to condemn the April 5 missile launch as a violation of UN resolutions and to tighten sanctions against North Korea. The UN statement was weaker than the resolution Japan and the United States had pursued.
North Korea claims it sent a communications satellite into space as part of a peaceful bid to develop its space program. The United States and others call the launch an illicit test of the technology used to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, even one eventually destined for the United States.
A Security Council resolution passed in 2006, days after North Korea carried out an underground nuclear test, prohibits Pyongyang from engaging in any ballistic missile-related activity, including launching rockets that use the same delivery technology as missiles mounted with warheads, Washington and other countries say.
U.S. President Barack Obama called the UN statement, which also called for quick resumption of disarmament talks, a "clear and united message" that North Korea's action was unlawful and would result in real consequences, Gibbs said.
North Korea, following through on earlier threats to withdraw from international disarmament talks if the council so much as criticized the launch, announced Tuesday it would boycott them. Since 2003, envoys from six countries - the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan - have been meeting in Beijing for sporadic negotiations on getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program in exchange for aid and other concessions.
"The six-party talks have lost the meaning of their existence, never to recover," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, declaring it would never participate in the talks again and is no longer bound to previous agreements.
Under a 2007 six-party deal, North Korea agreed to disable its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon north of Pyongyang - a key step toward dismantlement - in return for one million tonnes of fuel oil and other concessions. Disablement began later that year.
In June 2008, North Korea famously blew up the cooling tower at Yongbyon in a dramatic show of its commitment to denuclearization.
But disablement came to halt a month later as Pyongyang wrangled with Washington over how to verify its 18,000-page account of past atomic activities. The latest round of talks, in December, failed to push the process forward.
On Tuesday, North Korea said it would restart nuclear facilities, an apparent reference to its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon. North Korea already is believed to have enough plutonium to produce at least half a dozen atomic bombs.
David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks suspected secret proliferators, said a move to expel IAEA monitors would not necessarily amount to a crisis.
"Worse things have happened. It's the easiest thing North Korea can do to express its anger," he said.
"You can't just turn on a reactor in a couple weeks. They could test a nuclear device, but it would be such an escalation that the parties-that-be internationally would have to respond negatively. Kicking out the monitors is something that easily can be reversed and not cause that much harm."
He said it would take fuel-deficient North Korea six months to a year to restart the reactor.