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North Korea

Pyongyang to restart nuclear plant "in a week's time"

Article published on the 2008-09-24 Latest update 2008-09-24 14:01 TU

Central Pyongyang(Credit: Reuters)

Central Pyongyang
(Credit: Reuters)

North Korea has informed the UN-backed nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) that it will restart a key nuclear reprocessing plant, and has effectively banned all IAEA inspectors from the Yongbyon complex. This move also defies the terms of the stalled six-party disarmament-for-aid deal.

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All IAEA seals and surveillance equipment have been removed from Yonghyon, according to IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming.

At a closed session on the issue, IAEA deputy chief Olli Heinonen said that Pyongyang had told inspectors that it plans to "introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week's time", Fleming revealed.

The United States respondedn with a warning that it "will only serve to further isolate North Korea at a time when the other six-party talks members are working to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," said White House spokesperson Gordon Johndroe.

Under the agreement penned in February 2007 by the nations working towards disarming North Korea - South Korea, the US, Japan, China and Russia - Pyongyang agreed to disable and dismantle key nuclear facilities. The deal also allowed UN atomic inspectors back in.

In return, North Korea was to receive one million tonnes of fuel aid and was to be removed from a US list of terrorist states.

North Korea announced last month that it was backing out of the deal after the US did not remove it from the blacklist of countries supporting terrorism.

The US continues to dispute the verification of the halting of North Korea's nuclear program, which the reclusive regime delivered in June as part of the agreement.

Yongbyon, 96 kilometres north of Pyongyang, is the site of a five-megawatt reactor which began operating in 1987. It includes a fuel fabrication and plutonium reprocessing plant. Critics of the North Korean programme maintain that weapons-grade material could be extracted from spent fuel rods.