South Korea called today on Russia and China to help resolve the rapidly escalating nuclear crisis with North Korea following Pyongyang's decision to expel UN monitors.
Seoul said it would send officials to China and Russia, the North's closest allies, "at the earliest possible date" to help persuade Pyongyang to abandon its growing nuclear ambitions.
In a flurry of other diplomatic activity on Saturday, Japan said it would file an official protest with Pyongyang while Seoul announced a US envoy would visit South Korean president-elect Mr Roh Moo-Hyun around January 10th to discuss the crisis.
Delegates from South Korea, Japan and the US will also meet in the US early next month to discuss measures to defuse the crisis, foreign ministry officials said here.
And South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun said Seoul was concerned about possible North Korean military provocation, although no unusual military movements had been detected so far.
The developments came after North Korea announced yesterday in a letter to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would expel its inspectors and reactivate a reprocessing plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
It was the latest move in a week that saw the disabling of UN monitoring equipment and the removal of seals from nuclear facilities frozen since the 1994 Agreed Framework was signed with the US.
Washington reacted to the announcement by saying it would not bow to Pyongyang's "threats and broken commitments".
A senior official from South Korea's foreign ministry said today the crisis had reached a new and worrying level. "To date, restarting the reprocessing facility is the most serious aspect of the crisis... we consider the situation very serious," the official said.
Pyongyang has said it is reactivating its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, because it needs electricity after the US cut off oil shipments last month.
The US and its allies agreed to suspend the oil shipments to North Korea to punish the energy-starved state for its renewed drive to build up its nuclear program.
AFP