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North Korea halts nuclear reactor - Seoul
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-18 16:31

North Korea has suspended the operation of its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, a South Korean foreign ministry official said Monday, a move analysts said could be aimed at extracting material for nuclear weapons.

The official said the purpose of the stoppage was unclear, but also said Seoul was treating the suspension as a potentially serious development.

North Korea said explicitly for the first time in February that it possessed nuclear weapons. It has also previously said it had reprocessed nuclear fuel to get weapons-grade plutonium.

South Korean and Japanese media reported at the weekend that North Korea had stopped the reactor in Yongbyon.

"We have more or less what had been reported in the media, but we'll have to see what North Korea's intention or its future actions will be," Kim Sook, the foreign ministry's director general for North American affairs, told South Korea's KBS radio.

Analysts said a suspension of the plant could allow the North to extract spent fuel rods, which could be turned into weapons-grade plutonium.

"I think we'll have to deal with the suspension of the 5-megawatt reactor as a weighty issue," Kim added.

Selig Harrison of the Washington-based Center for International Policy told South Korean reporters Saturday that North Koreans had told him the plant would be shut to remove spent fuel rods as part of routine maintenance.

Harrison visited Pyongyang earlier this month and met senior North Korean officials.

The plant in Yongbyon had been shut down and sealed under a 1994 pact between the United States and North Korea, but is believed to have been restarted in early 2003.

North Korea is also suspected of running a separate nuclear development program based on uranium enrichment technology.

There has been little progress in multilateral talks started in 2003 to negotiate an end to the North's nuclear programs, including the suspected uranium-based scheme.

The two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China have met for three rounds of the talks, but a fourth round has not materialized after the North demanded an end to what it called a hostile policy by the United States.

North Korea said Monday that a new plan drawn up by the South Korean and U.S. military, which is reported to include scenarios such as a North Korean collapse, was proof that Washington had no intention of settling the nuclear issue peacefully.

"The DPRK's nuclear weapons serve as main deterrent to avert a war and ensure peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the rest of northeast Asia," the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a report carried by the KCNA news agency.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

Washington and Seoul believe Pyongyang has built one or two nuclear weapons and has enough material for more than eight.

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