North Korea has threatened to break off an accord with the United States that is designed to prevent the communist state from developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said in an article "released upon authorisation" that delays in building a nuclear power plant for Pyongyang may lead to the country abandoning the 1994 agreement.
|
Under the deal, the US agreed an international consortium would provide North Korea with financing and technology to build two light-water nuclear reactors.
In return, North Korea agreed to freeze the development of its own reactors under a programme that, it was feared, would have led to North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons.
The LWRs are due to be completed by 2003 but delays in the building mean that target date will probably not be met.
Relations between North Korea and the US have effectively been frozen following George W Bush's election as president.
"The failure by the US to live up to its obligation to [the] LWR project by the year 2003 would possibly drive us to respond to it with abandonding on-going nuclear freeze," the report carried by KCNA said.
"We cannot side idle over our loss while maintaining the nuclear freeze. Many years have passed since the adoption of the DPRK-US agreed framework, yet the DPRK-US relations are still characterised by distrust and misunderstandings since the emergence of the new administration in the US."
AFP