NORTH KOREA:AN INTERNATIONAL effort to denuclearise the Korean peninsula was in jeopardy yesterday after it emerged that North Korea had started reassembling its main nuclear reactor.
North Korea began disabling the reactor at Yongbyon last year in return for economic aid and diplomatic concessions, including its removal from a US list of countries which sponsor terrorism.
South Korea's foreign ministry said yesterday that North Korea had begun reassembling the reactor in a protest against Washington's delay in removing it from the US list of state terrorism sponsors. Any collapse in the so-called six-party deal to disarm North Korea would be a blow to the Bush administration, which has touted the agreement with Pyongyang as a foreign policy success.
The latest development comes a week after Pyongyang announced it had suspended efforts to disable its nuclear facilities and was considering putting the plutonium-based Yongbyon reactor back into action. President Bush said in June that he planned to remove North Korea from the terrorism list as part of a February 2007 deal to dismantle the Stalinist state's nuclear programme.
But the White House delayed its removal because of North Korea's failure to agree to an acceptable "verification" mechanism to prevent future proliferation.
The White House yesterday declined to comment on North Korea's latest actions, but it emphasised that Pyongyang needed to agree to a "credible verification protocol" before it could be removed from the state sponsors of terror list.
North Korea said yesterday that a 34-year-old woman named by South Korea as a spy who seduced military officers to gain classified information was in fact a criminal on the run. - ( Financial Timesservice and Reuters)