North Korea plans to restart within two months a reactor that could produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, while a Bush administration official said Russia and China had yet to show interest in curbing Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been pressing Russia, China and others to use their influence to head off resumption of a program, frozen since 1994, that could produce more bomb-grade plutonium in months.

Normally, Russia and China make it clear when they are working with U.S. policymakers on a foreign-policy headache, added a U.S. official who spoke on condition he not be named.

"The fact that we're not hearing very much is pretty telling evidence," he said. "If there's anybody who can get North Korea to stop this, it would be Russia and China" working together, he said.

Washington is now looking toward a Jan. 6 meeting of the board of governors of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. agency responsible for monitoring Pyongyang's compliance with nuclear safeguard treaties.

That session is expected to move the North's breech of its obligations to the U.N. Security Council, the official said.

Asked what would happen without a diplomatic solution, he said, "I don't think this is going to end up with North Korea reprocessing more spent fuel to get more nuclear weapons."

North Korean technicians have said they plan to restart within two months a small, 5-megawatt reactor, the IAEA said on Thursday.

In releasing the timetable, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said moves toward unfreezing the reactor and three related facilities at Yongbyon, 55 miles north of Pyongyang, were a very worrying form of brinkmanship.

FACILITIES MOTHBALLED

The facilities were mothballed in a 1994 nonproliferation pact with the United States, which brands Pyongyang the world's biggest peddler of missiles and related technology.

"The DPRK (North Korean) operators have told our inspectors that they are working on a one- to two-month timetable to restart the reactor," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters from Vienna.

Many analysts believe North Korea wants to force the United States to resume aid shipments and sign a non-aggression pact at a time the Bush administration is preoccupied by Iraq.

A State Department official said Washington had not yet decided how it would respond to a Dec. 3 appeal from the U.N. World Food Program to help feed hungry North Koreans.

The Bush administration, which last year contributed about one quarter of the 155,000 tons of food sent in by the U.N. body, will decide "based on the availability of U.S. food stocks, need, competing needs elsewhere and the ability to monitor distribution," the official said.

Rick Corsino, the World Food Program's country director for North Korea, said it was critical to get adequate pledges "if we are to repair the damage caused by enforced aid stoppages since September that have deprived three million of the hungriest children, women and elderly people of badly needed help."

The World Food Program is seeking to finance a DLRS. 201 million "emergency" operation that aims to feed 6.4 million particularly vulnerable people during 2003.

Washington remains deeply concerned about curbs on food aid monitoring, the humanitarian community's lack of access to about 25 percent of North Korean counties and the lack of countrywide nutrition surveys that adhere to international standards, the State Department said.

FRESH FUEL RODS

The IAEA's Gwozdecky said North Korea had moved 1,000 fresh fuel rods to the reactor but had not yet begun loading them into the core. Another 7,000 would be needed to fill the reactor to its capacity, he said.

Enough weapons-grade plutonium probably had already been produced at Yongbyon to build two nuclear weapons by the time the plant was closed down in 1994, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has concluded.

PHOTO CAPTION

A satellite image of the Yongbyon facility in North Korea is captured by DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite March 2, 2002. South Korea voiced deep concern Dec. 25, 2002, over North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship after its communist neighbor moved fresh fuel to a reactor capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. (Reuters - Handout)