N. Korea Reactivates Nuclear Facilities

AP ^ | February 5, 2003 | SANG-HUN CHOE

[Indy Pendance]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Wednesday that it has reactivated nuclear facilities frozen for nearly a decade and will use them "at the present stage" only to produce electricity, adding additional tension to the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The North's main nuclear complex at Yonbgyon was purportedly the center of a suspected nuclear weapons program in the 1990s. In December - amid the growing standoff with the United States - the North expelled U.N. experts monitoring the site to ensure it is not being used to produce weapons.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he was unaware of reports the facilities has been revived. U.S. officials and nuclear experts say the amount of electricity that North Korea can produce at its nuclear facilities is negligible.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, South Korea - which has been pressing forward with attempts to reconcile with the North despite the nuclear crisis - opened a road across its heavily militarized border, the first such connection between North and South in more than five decades.

A spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said his country had restarted its nuclear facilities and was "putting (their) operation ... for the production of electricity on a normal footing."

The North Korean government "has already solemnly declared that its nuclear activity would be limited to the peaceful purposes including the production of electricity at the present stage," said the unidentified spokesman in remarks carried by the official KCNA news agency.

The Yongbyon nuclear complex has been dormant since a 1994 deal with the United States. The North, which often accuses Washington of plotting to invade it, said in December that it would reactivate a 5-megawatt Soviet-designed reactor at the site.

The facilities at Yongbyon include a building that stores 8,000 spent fuel rods and a reprocessing laboratory, where the North Koreans can extract weapons-grade plutonium from the spent fuel rods.

Last week, U.S. officials said spy satellites have detected covered trucks apparently taking on cargo at the storage facilty where spent nuclear fuel rods are stored. If the rods are processed, enough plutonium can be extracted to make several nuclear weapons, U.S. officials have said.

In parliament, South Korea's No. 2 leader said that while Seoul would not tolerate the North's alleged atomic weapons program, it wanted to move ahead with reconciliation efforts.

"We can never tolerate North Korea's nuclear weapons development, which is a threat to our national security and world peace, but tension should not be allowed to keep rising on the Korean Peninsula," Prime Minister Kim Suk-soo said in a speech to the National Assembly.

In a conciliatory move Wednesday, a group of 107 South Korean tourism officials and business people traveled to a scenic mountain resort in the North on a recently built cross-border road. The 10 buses moved slowly along the narrow dirt road to the northern side as snow fell.

South Korea's Hyundai business group started a money-losing cruise to the Diamond Mountain resort in 1998. The company hopes the cheaper overland trip will attract more South Korean tourists.

The road is the first overland route linking the two Koreas since they were divided in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not in a peace treaty, and the two countries are technically still at war.

The road was one of several cooperation projects agreed upon at a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. Wednesday's trip was hoped to pave the way for organized tours by South Korean tourists.

The North Korean spokesman criticized U.S. efforts to bring the nuclear dispute to the U.N. Security Council, saying the standoff is between the North and the United States only.

He said that unless the Security Council confronts the United States' "wrong Korean policy," North Korea will consider the world body biased and "accordingly, not recognize it."

The nuclear dispute erupted in October, when U.S. officials said the North had admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 pact.

As punishment, the United States and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea in December. The North then took steps to restart a nuclear reactor, expelled U.N. monitors and withdrew from a global nuclear arms control treaty.

[wolfman]

Bump :)