VIENNA — North Korea kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors from a plant that previously produced weapons-grade plutonium and notified the nuclear watchdog that it would restart operations as early as next week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.
The moves mean that the North could be reprocessing plutonium in a matter of months.
This latest provocation by North Korea kills what little hope remained that the Bush administration could complete a denuclearization deal in the president’s remaining months in office.
Although the regime has been warning for weeks that it would restart nuclear activities, the speed and extent of its moves have been discouraging.
For at least the time being, the three nuclear inspectors will remain at the sprawling Yongbyon nuclear compound, but they will not be allowed in the most important facility: the reprocessing plant that produces the deadly heart of the nuclear bomb. At the insistence of the North Koreans, the inspectors removed seals and surveillance cameras that had been installed last year to ensure the plant was mothballed.
“This work was completed today. There are no more . . . seals and surveillance equipment at the reprocessing facility,” spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement at the atomic-energy agency’s headquarters in Vienna. She also said the North Koreans had notified the agency that they intended to “introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week’s time.”
There was no immediate comment from Pyong yang, the North Korean capital, but in recent weeks officials there have made clear they are angry that the U.S. has not followed through on a promise to remove North Korea from a list of “terrorism-sponsoring” nations.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood labeled North Korea’s moves “very disappointing.”
President Bush announced in June that he would recommend the lifting of the terrorism-sponsor designation as a reward for North Korea’s submission of a detailed inventory of its nuclear program. But the administration has not been satisfied with the document and is asking for more verification before making the move.
“Now that the U.S. true colors are brought to light, (North Korea) neither wishes to be delisted as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ nor expects such a thing to happen,” said an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in a state news-agency report. “It will go its own way.”
North Korean rhetoric and brinkmanship are legendary, but the regime appears to be genuinely infuriated that the designation was not lifted. The North has not been implicated in terrorist activity since the 1980s, and the designation makes it difficult to obtain international loans and investment.
The day after Bush’s announcement that he would lift the terrorism designation, North Korea demolished the cooling tower of the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon as a gesture of goodwill. CNN and a U.S. State Department official were invited as observers.
U.S. weapons experts estimate that North Korea has a stockpile of about 100 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, enough to produce as many as 10 bombs.
