North Korea said today it will stop disabling its nuclear facilities and consider restoring the Yongbyon reactor that can make material for atomic bombs, accusing the United States of violating a disarmament deal.
"We have decided to immediately suspend disabling our nuclear facilities," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a foreign ministry official as saying.
"This measure has been effective on August 14th and related parties have been notified of it," the official said.
Analysts said that given North Korea's deep reluctance to give up its nuclear weapons programme -- the one powerful negotiating card it has with the outside world -- its latest move was no big surprise.
"North Korea is trying to muddle through and delay as much as possible," said Lee Dong-bok, a senior associate at the CSIS think tank in Seoul.
"At the same time, this is a last ditch effort trying to somehow influence US presidential politics."
The KCNA announcement coincided with the start of the US Democratic Party's convention to choose its presidential candidate.
Regional powers have been pressing North Korea to accept stringent measures to verify the declaration of its nuclear programme. The United States has made clear that until that happens it will not take the North off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The news gave an extra nudge down to an already falling South Korean won and some analysts said it could hit the country's share market.
Yesterday, a US envoy for nuclear talks with the communist state said he had had "substantive" talks with his North Korean counterpart.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, travelling with Secretary Condoleezza Rice in Jerusalem, said he had no immediate comment on the KCNA report.
South Korea's presidential Blue House also had no comment.
The previous day, Hu and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak issued a joint statement in Seoul urging cooperation in implementing the deal to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
Disablement work that started in late 2007 at Yongbyon has mostly been completed and it was aimed at making it impossible for the North to resume operations there for at least a year.
In late June, North Korea toppled the cooling tower at its plutonium-producing reactor in a symbolic move to show its commitment to the nuclear deal with South Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States.
The last remaining stage of the planned disabling of Yongbyon, a plant to make nuclear fuel and another to turn spent fuel into arms-grade plutonium, was the unloading of irradiated rods from its ageing reactor.
Reuters