North Korea has expelled U.N. monitors from its plutonium-making nuclear plant and plans to start reactivating it next week, rowing back from a 2007 deal to scrap its atomic bomb program, officials said on Wednesday.
The reclusive Stalinist state said on Friday it was working to restart the Yongbyon atomic complex it had been dismantling since last November under a disarmament-for-aid agreement with five powers that has derailed in disputes over implementation.
Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head of non-proliferation safeguards, told an IAEA board of governors meeting that monitors verifying North Korea’s denuclearization were forced to leave the plutonium plant this week.
“There are no more seals and surveillance equipment in place at the (plutonium) reprocessing facility,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, referring to the most proliferation-sensitive installation at Yongbyon.
“(North Korea) further stated that from here on, IAEA inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant,” she said, summarizing Heinonen’s remarks.
“(North Korea) also informed IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week’s time,” Fleming said outside the Vienna meeting.
Nuclear analysts have said North Korea would need several months at least to bring the installation back on line since it had been largely taken apart over the past year.
Confronted with the apparent unraveling of a rare foreign policy achievement by the Bush administration, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea’s actions had “by no means” killed off the country’s nuclear disarmament.
Get Out of Dodge!
N.Korea ousts U.N. monitors, to restart atom bomb plant
Source: Reuters
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