agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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 Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:59 am Post subject: North Korea's reassembling their nuclear plant: FOX NEWS |
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FOX News is reporting that the North is rebuilding their nuclear facility b/c they're mad about the terrorist state list delay.
Lookie here...
| Quote: |
North Korea begins reassembling nuclear facility: report
2 hours, 53 minutes ago
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea has begun reassembling its Yongbyon reactor that can make material for atomic bombs in violation of U.S. conditions for improved diplomatic relations, media reported.
Japan's Kyodo news agency said reconstruction began on Monday. It cited sources in Beijing close to six-party nuclear talks on North Korean, which involve Japan, South Korea, Russia and China, as well as North Korea and the United States.
North Korea said on August 26 it would stop disabling its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear complex and accused the United States of violating a disarmament-for-aid deal.
Fox News, quoting U.S. officials, said the North Koreans were likely protesting a U.S. delay in removing the communist state from its list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.
Fox did not give details of the reassembly work nor did it cite a North Korean source.
"They've been threatening this move for some time," one U.S. official told Fox, adding that until now the threats were seen as merely a way for North Korean officials "to express their anger."
Even now, piecing the facility back together is seen as a "symbolic gesture" because so much already has been taken apart, Fox reported.
Another U.S. official told Fox News that North Korea's reactor could be back in operation in two to three months.
North Korea began disabling its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor and other facilities at its Yongbyon facility in November as a step toward their ultimate dismantlement in exchange for economic aid and political concessions, including removal from the U.S. terror list.
Proliferation experts believe the North, which conducted its only nuclear test two years ago, has already produced enough plutonium for about six to eight bombs.
DAUNTING, YET FEASIBLE
The United States said last week Pyongyang's move to stop taking the Yongbyon facility apart was a step backward and reiterated North Korea must disable its facilities before it is removed from the terrorism blacklist that restricts investment.
"It is a violation of their commitments to the six-party framework. It certainly is in violation of the principle of action for action," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told Reuters at the time.
Engineers, working since late last year and mostly overseen by U.S. experts, have almost completed disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The aim is to make it impossible to resume operations for at least a year.
But analysts have said that any North Korea threat to restart its plant that makes arms-grade plutonium was feasible, although the task would be a daunting one.
The North's announcement last week confirmed the belief of some analysts that its communist leaders have no intention of giving up nuclear weapons, a diplomatic trump card that has repeatedly won them concessions in the past.
The disablement work had been done at three facilities -- a plant that produces nuclear fuel, the North's sole operating reactor and a plant that turns spent fuel into plutonium.
The only major remaining step was the discharging of irradiated fuel rods from the reactor. The rods are still in North Korea and contain enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb, proliferation experts said.
(Reporting by Philip Barbara in Washington and Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo; Editing by Jeremy Laurence) |
FOX tends to lie a lot but this type of knee-jerk reaction is par-for-the-course behavior by the North. So it's probably true.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/korea_north_yongbyon_dc
So the North is playing hard-ball again, huh? I doubt Bush Co. will sit around and put up with that, and neither will Lee. Will the North lose it's food aid over this? |
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