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December 13, 2002
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Thursday it will immediately revive a Soviet-designed nuclear power plant the United States suspects was being used to develop nuclear weapons before it was frozen in 1994.
A dismayed South Korea urged its neighbor to reverse the decision. In Washington, a spokesman for President Bush called the situation "regrettable" but said the United States had no plans for military action in response to the North Korean decision.
With a bitter winter ahead, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said his country had no choice but to reopen the reactor and resume construction of other nuclear facilities to supply desperately needed power after a U.S.-led decision last month to suspend annual oil shipments of 500,000 tons.
KCNA, the North's state-run news agency, quoted the spokesman but did not name him.
A South Korean government official said it would take about two months for North Korea to reactivate its nuclear plant.
The North Korean announcement followed the seizure and release this week of a ship carrying North Korean Scud missiles to Yemen. North Korea accused the United States early today of piracy in the seizure.
"This is an unpardonable piracy that wantonly encroached upon" the country's sovereignty, said the North's Korean Central News Agency.
It wasn't clear whether the interception influenced the decision to reactivate the plant, but an editorial in the North's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said: "It is necessary to heighten vigilance against the U.S. strategy for world supremacy and "anti-terrorism war."'
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the United States would continue to seek a peaceful resolution of the issue of North Korea's nuclear program.
"The announcement flies in the face of international consensus that the North Korea regime must fulfill all its commitments, in particular dismantling its nuclear weapons program," Fleischer said.
The U.N. nuclear agency, which has monitored North Korea's nuclear program since 1994, urged the country to "act with restraint." Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said North Korea had asked his agency to remove seals and monitoring cameras from all its nuclear facilities. He urged them to allow the seals to remain in place and warned that tampering with them would be a violation of North Korea's agreement with the IAEA.
ElBaradei also asked North Korea to meet with U.N. technical experts to discuss ways of monitoring restarted reactors and related facilities to ensure they are used only for peaceful purposes.
The North Korean nuclear program was suspended under a 1994 deal with Washington, averting a possible war on the Korean Peninsula. Experts say North Korea could quickly extract enough plutonium from its old facilities to make several nuclear weapons.
Under the 1994 pact, North Korea agreed to freeze the plutonium program in return for two modern, light-water reactors built by a U.S.-led consortium and 500,000 tons of heavy oil a year until the reactors are built.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says he believes the North already has one or two nuclear weapons. Speaking to reporters Thursday in Doha, Qatar, Rumsfeld called North Korea "a very strange regime" but said it was not time to abandon diplomacy.
"I have no idea when any country, including the United States, would make the judgment that the diplomatic effort, which is under way, can't bear fruit," Rumsfeld said.
North Korea has often used the threat of confrontation as a means of gaining leverage ahead of negotiations, though it was not immediately clear whether its latest announcement was part of such a strategy.
Isolated North Korea, which depends on outside food aid, has pursued a reconciliation process with South Korea as well as diplomatic ties with other countries. But it has repeatedly sparred with the Bush administration.
The North Korean official said North Korea was obliged to revive the program because of a U.S.-led decision last month to suspend annual oil shipments.