US Says N.Korea Atomic Reactor Restart 'Dangerous' (Oh, do you think!!!)
Updated 7:58 PM ET February 5, 2003
By Paul Eckert and Vicki Allen
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea said it had restarted the atomic plant at the heart of its suspected nuclear weapons program, a move the United States described on Wednesday as a dangerous development by a "terrorist regime."
The latest twist in a crisis that began last October came in a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement that said the reactor had been started to generate electricity for the energy-starved country. Nuclear experts say the plant is too small to produce much power but could produce material for atomic bombs.
"The situation in North Korea is a dangerous one," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee in Washington.
"It's a regime that is a terrorist regime...And the fact that they have announced that they are going to breach three or four agreements...is a worrisome thing," he later told reporters.
He said U.S. forces could respond if needed despite preparations for a possible war with Iraq.
The North's statement came as international attention was focused on Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the U.N. Security Council in which he said U.N. weapons inspectors could not disarm Iraq and that war may be the only resort.
Washington said in October Pyongyang had admitted to enriching uranium in violation of a 1994 accord, under which it froze its nuclear program in exchange for two energy-generating reactors and free fuel.
Since December, North Korea has expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), restarted the mothballed nuclear complex capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium and threatened to resume missile tests.
"The DPRK (North Korea) is now putting the operation of its nuclear facilities for the production of electricity on a normal footing after their restart," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
The move raises the stakes in a crisis Pyongyang said the United States had triggered by threatening the isolated communist state.
"VERY STRONG SIGNAL"
U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said North Korea was "very far along" in its nuclear program, limiting U.S. options.
"This is a very strong signal to those who wonder...why we shouldn't wait on Iraq, to say: Don't wait while problems continue to gather. It does begin to limit your options," Rice said on ABC's Nightline television program. She said a diplomatic solution remained possible.
Five days ago U.S. officials said U.S. satellite surveillance had shown North Korea was moving fuel rods around the reactor complex at Yongbyon, including possibly some of the 8,000 spent fuel rods that experts consider a key step in building bombs.
But the U.S. officials added there was no sign crucial reprocessing of those spent rods had begun -- a step that would enable North Korea to begin bomb-making in weeks, adding to the arsenal of two bombs the West suspects it has already built.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said without inspectors in North Korea the IAEA cannot certify any alleged activity.
"If this is true, the IAEA deplores the operation of any nuclear facility without IAEA inspections," she said.
North Korea's statement did not mention the fuel rods, and repeated North Korea's assertion that it had ended the freeze on its nuclear reactor to produce electricity.
"The DPRK government has already solemnly declared that its nuclear activity would be limited to the peaceful purposes including the production of electricity at the present stage," KCNA quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
Impoverished North Korea suffers from crippling power shortages, but nuclear experts reject Pyongyang's electricity argument because the reactor at Yongbyon is a small military research reactor with insignificant power generation capacity. |
