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North Korea begins extracting plutonium
Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:24am EDT
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By Miyoung Kim and Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has started to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods at its nuclear arms plant, its foreign ministry said on Saturday, further raising regional tensions already stoked by its defiant rocket launch this month.
The announcement came hours after a U.N. Security Council committee on Friday placed three North Korean companies on a U.N. blacklist for aiding Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs, eliciting a sharp rebuke from a North Korean envoy.
Reclusive North Korea has lashed out at being punished for the April 5 launch, widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test that violated U.N. resolutions, saying it would boycott six-way nuclear talks and bolster its nuclear deterrent.
"The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant began as declared in the Foreign Ministry statement dated April 14," North Korea's official news agency KCNA quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
"This will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defense in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from the hostile forces," it said.
South Korea's foreign ministry said it had no immediate comment on the North's announcement and Japan said it would urge Pyongyang to resume international nuclear talks.
"The UN Security Council... is telling North Korea to respond to the calls for resuming the six-party talks at an early stage. Japan will also try to persuade (North Korea)," Kazuo Kodama, a spokesman at the Japanese foreign ministry, told Reuters.
PRESSURING WASHINGTON
North Korea, which was hit with U.N. sanctions after missile tests in July 2006 and its only nuclear test a few months later, has used its military threat for years to gain global attention and squeeze concessions out of regional powers.
By making these moves early in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, it has more cards to play during his presidency and forces him to make crucial decisions about how it will manage its relations with Pyongyang, analysts said.
"North Korea wants to continue provoking new crises, to demand the attention of the U.S. and others," said Zhu Feng, professor at Peking University.
"The biggest issue is still North Korea provoking a crisis, and the U.S. ignoring them. That makes getting the six-party talks restarted again a difficult diplomatic issue."
North Korea struck a deal with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States to disable its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant in exchange for massive aid and ending its international ostracism.
It has expelled U.N. and U.S. nuclear inspectors at Yongbyon, located about 100 km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, who had been overseeing steps to put the entire plant out of operation for at least a year.
Rebuilding parts of Yongbyon could increase the regional security threat because Pyongyang could add to its meager stockpile of fissile material, increasing the likelihood that it could conduct another nuclear weapons test. Continued...
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