- VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N.
nuclear watchdog agency said on Wednesday North Korea had moved fresh fuel
to a reactor which the United States says must stay mothballed because
it can be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
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- The announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) heightens a tense international confrontation that has followed
the breakdown of an eight-year-old agreement restricting North Korea's
nuclear program.
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- North Korea's defense minister on Tuesday accused Washington
of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.
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- "We had noticed yesterday that they were carrying
out work at the five megawatt reactor in Yongbyon," IAEA spokesman
Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters. "And we noticed that they were moving
fresh fuel to the reactor."
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- He added that North Korean technicians had broken most
of the seals and disabled U.N. surveillance devices at all four nuclear
facilities at Yongbyon. The cameras had been monitoring the secretive Stalinist
state's compliance with a 1994 shutdown of the plants.
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- "North Korea estimates that (the five megawatt reactor)
could be up and running in one to two months," he said, adding that
the U.N. agency believed it would take longer.
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- FUEL RODS
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- The IAEA is also worried about the plutonium storage
and reprocessing facilities at the Yongbyon complex. A storage pond there
holds some 8,000 spent irradiated fuel rods which contain large amounts
of plutonium.
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- "The reprocessing plant could have absolutely no
civilian use for North Korea," Gwozdecky said.
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- But he said no work was being done at the plant, capable
of separating plutonium from other substances in the spent fuel.
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- The facilities at Yongbyon were frozen under a 1994 agreement
with the United States under which North Korea halted its nuclear arms
program in exchange for oil shipments and the construction of two atomic
reactors that are difficult to use for military purposes.
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- But the United States, South Korea and other states suspended
oil shipments to North Korea this month after revelations in October that
it was operating a separate nuclear weapons program using highly enriched
uranium.
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- On Saturday, North Koreans began removing the seals and
disabling U.N. monitoring cameras at the five-megawatt Yongbyon reactor
after the IAEA failed to meet Pyongyang's demand that it take away the
gear so it could revive the reactor.
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- Gwozdecky said the IAEA was keeping two inspectors in
North Korea to keep on eye on the situation. It has carried out limited
inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities since the early 1990s.
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- U.S. intelligence officials say enough weapons-grade
plutonium had already been produced at Yongbyon to build two nuclear weapons
by the time the plant was closed down in 1994.
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- Other U.N. sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the
IAEA governing board was tentatively planning to meet on January 6 to discuss
North Korea.
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- The board would either decide to give Pyongyang a chance
to begin cooperating and hold high-level talks with the IAEA or it might
decide to put the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
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- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday warned North
Korea not to take advantage of the Iraq crisis to further its nuclear ambitions,
and said U.S. forces were capable of fighting two wars at once.
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- North Korea's Defense Minister Kim Il-chol was quoted
on Tuesday by the north's official KCNA news agency as attacking "U.S.
hawks who are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink
of nuclear war."
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- North Korea maintains it has a right to possess nuclear
weapons and insists that Washington sign a nonaggression pact as a basis
for talks on their differences.
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