North Korea Suspends Nuclear Reactor Disablement

Via AP -

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Tuesday it has suspended work to disable its nuclear reactor in anger over Washington's failure to remove it from the U.S. list of terror sponsors. The North said it will soon consider a step to restore the plutonium-producing facility.

The announcement poses the biggest hurdle yet to the communist nation's denuclearization process under a landmark deal last year.

"The U.S. postponed the process of delisting the (North) as a 'state sponsor of terrorism,'" the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "Now that the U.S. breached the agreed points, the (North) is compelled to take" countermeasures, it said.

The Foreign Ministry also said the government will "consider soon a step to restore" the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, but it did not elaborate. The disablement was suspended as of Aug. 14, it added.

The U.S. offered to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism as one of the key concessions in exchange for the North shutting down and disabling the nuclear reactor under a landmark deal reached last year in six-party negotiations that include China, Japan, the two Koreas, the U.S. and Russia.

In June, the U.S. said it would remove North Korea from the list after it turned in a long-delayed account of its nuclear programs and blew up the reactor's cooling tower in a symbolic move to demonstrate its commitment to disarm.

North Korea began disabling the plutonium-producing facilities in November but the North slowed the work in a dispute with Washington over how to verify a declaration of its nuclear programs.

The two sides have been negotiating on that issue with Washington insisting it would remove the North from the terror list only after it agrees to a verification plan.

That has angered North Korea.

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South Korean and U.S. officials have said eight of the 11 disablement measures have been finished and that when the entire disablement is completed, it would take at least a year for the North to restart the facilities.

Whang Joo-ho, a nuclear expert at South Korea's Kyung Hee University, said it would take about three to six months for North Korea to restore its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. He said it would take only one month to rebuild the kind of cooling tower the North destroyed in June.