North Korea has begun reassembling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, able to make material for atomic bombs, in violation of U.S. conditions for improved diplomatic relations, U.S. and Japanese media reported.
Japan's Kyodo news agency said reconstruction began on Monday. It cited sources in Beijing close to six-party nuclear talks on North Korean, which involve Japan, South Korea, Russia and China, as well as North Korea and the United States.
North Korea announced on August 26 it would stop disabling its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear complex and accused the United States of violating a disarmament-for-aid deal.
Fox News, quoting U.S. officials, said the North Koreans were probably protesting a U.S. delay in removing the communist state from its list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.
Fox did not give details of reassembly work at the plutonium-producing reactor or cite a North Korean source.
"They've been threatening this move for some time," one U.S. official told Fox. Until now, he said, the threats were seen as just a way for North Korean officials "to express their anger."
Even now, piecing the facility back together is seen as a "symbolic gesture" because so much already has been taken apart, according to Fox. Another U.S. official told Fox that Yongbyon could be back in operation in two to three months.
The watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency has monitors in North Korea but an IAEA spokesman said on Wednesday he had no information on the current situation.
An agency report issued on Tuesday said North Korea had notified the IAEA already on August 18 that it had decided to suspend disabling work at the reactor. The activity had been under IAEA surveillance since November 2007.
Credible verification
The White House declined to directly address the report, and stressed again the need for North Korea to provide a mechanism to verify that is truly dismantling its nuclear program.
"We and our partners in the six-party talks have made clear to North Korea that we need a credible verification protocol, and as soon as have it, we will remove North Korea from the terror list," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
"North Korea knows what it needs to do at this point. The six-party talks operate on a principle of action-for-action."
Pyongyang began disabling the reactor and other facilities at Yongbyon in November as a step toward their ultimate dismantlement in exchange for economic aid and political concessions including removal from the U.S. terror list.
Proliferation experts believe the North, which conducted its only nuclear test two years ago, has already produced enough plutonium for about six to eight bombs.
The United States said last week Pyongyang's move to stop taking the Yongbyon facility apart was a step backward and reiterated North Korea must disable its facilities before it is removed from the terrorism blacklist that restricts investment.
Engineers, working since late last year and mostly overseen by U.S. experts, have almost completed disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The aim is to make it impossible to resume operations for at least a year.
But analysts have said that any North Korea threat to restart its plant that makes arms-grade plutonium was feasible, although the task would be a daunting one.
The North's announcement last week confirmed the belief of some analysts that its communist leaders have no intention of giving up nuclear weapons, a diplomatic trump card that has repeatedly won them concessions in the past.
PHOTO CAPTION
A Digital Globe satellite image shows a nuclear facility in Yongbyon, North Korea September 29, 2004.
Reuters