NKorea to quit talks, reopen nuclear plants

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 10:26 PM Posted by Beijing News


North Korea announced Tuesday it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN's condemnation of its rocket launch.

The communist nation said Security Council discussion of the launch, which it insists sent a satellite into orbit, was "an unbearable insult" to its people.

Hours later, the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA said its inspectors had been ordered to leave the country as Pyongyang prepared to reactivate its nuclear facilities.

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea DPRK has today informed IAEA inspectors in the Yongbyon facility that it is immediately ceasing all cooperation with the IAEA," said Marc Vidricaire, spokesman for the UN nuclear watchdog.

The inspectors were in North Korea to oversee the disabling of plants at Yongbyon that produced weapons-grade plutonium as part of a February 2007 six-nation deal.

A statement from Pyongyang's foreign ministry carried by the Korean Central News Agency said: "There is no need for the six-party talks any more.

"We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks."

North Korea "will strengthen its nuclear deterrent for its defence by all means," it added.

"We will take steps to restore disabled nuclear facilities... and reprocess used fuel rods that came from experimental nuclear reactors."

Analysts described the statement from the North as unusually strong and China, the country's sole major ally, urged it to reconsider.

The moves came after the Security Council unanimously approved a statement condemning the April 5 launch, which it said contravened a resolution passed after the North's 2006 missile and nuclear tests.

The council agreed to tighten sanctions which were mandated under Resolution 1718 but never enforced amid hopes of progress on denuclearisation.

China and Russia successfully resisted calls for a new resolution, saying they did not want to harm prospects for resuming the disarmament talks which group them with the two Koreas, Japan and the United States.

China urged the North to stay in the talks.

"The Chinese side hopes all sides will... continue to advance and push forward the six-party talks and the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula," said foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

Jiang emphasised that China maintained friendly relations with North Korea and opposed any further UN sanctions.

Russia's foreign ministry expressed regret while Japan said it "strongly urges" Pyongyang to return to the negotiations.

"It's hard to say how long it would take to put everything back and start reprocessing the spent fuel rods to get plutonium," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.





A view of a mosque in Cairo during sunset. REUTERS/Tarek Mostafa

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