North Korea begins moving new fuel rods into reactor

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has begun moving fresh fuel rods into a reactor, another step in reactivating nuclear facilities that could produce weapons, a South Korean news agency said today.

The Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified South Korean government official, said the communist North began moving fuel rods into the five-megawatt reactor at its main nuclear center in Yongbyon, 50 miles north of its capital, Pyongyang.

In a confrontation with the United States, North Korea on Dec. 12 decided to restart its frozen nuclear facilities and then removed U.N. monitoring seals and cameras from the reactor and three other key nuclear facilities.

"We've confirmed through IAEA that North Korea began moving fuel rods into the reactor on Wednesday," Yonhap quoted its source as saying.

More inspectors

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency has three inspectors staying in North Korea eye-checking the activities of North Koreans. The number of inspectors was increased from two to three this week.

In the Yonhap report, the South Korean official did not say whether North Korea has actually begun loading the fuel inside the Soviet-designed reactor core, which can produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The official said it was unknown how many fuel rods have been moved so far, adding that the move was expected to continue for a while.

North Korea's willingness to publicly flout its international commitments suggests it is trying to force itself onto Washington's agenda to win talks with its longtime foe about a nonaggression treaty.

Possibly as part of that strategy, North Korea has stepped up its anti-American rhetoric in recent days, warning that U.S. policy was leading the region to the "brink of nuclear war."

The Bush administration, however, has rejected negotiations with North Korea unless it abandons nuclear activities and says the North's moves to reactivate the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon amount to blackmail.

Fears of a crisis

The standoff has raised fears of another nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula like one in 1994 that some experts say nearly escalated into war.

The United States fears the plant -- whose operations were frozen in a deal that averted the earlier crisis -- could be used to make nuclear weapons and has urged the North not to reactivate it. Intelligence analysts believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs that were made from the reactor in the 1990s.

Washington's preparations for a possible war with Iraq may have given new urgency to North Korea's demands for a nonaggression treaty, though the destitute North is also believed eager to extract economic benefits from any deal.

The nuclear facilities were sealed under a 1994 agreement in which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear development in exchange for oil from the United States and its allies.

North Korea moved swiftly to restart the reactor after the United States cut off oil shipments to the energy-starved nation in an effort to pressure the North into abandoning a separate nuclear weapons program based on uranium enrichment.

North Korean officials would need "a month or two" to make the Soviet-designed, five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon operational, the IAEA says.

U.S. officials say North Korea's claim that it needs the facility to generate electricity is false because there is no use for plutonium other than trying to build a nuclear bomb.

There are 8,000 spent fuel rods at the facility, enough to make several atomic bombs within months. The IAEA said it did not appear the North Koreans had removed any rods.

President Bush and South Korea's president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, will exchange special envoys next month to discuss North Korea, Roh's chief spokesman, Lee Nak-yon, said Wednesday. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly is likely to visit South Korea, and Roh's envoy will return the visit, he said.

In Russia, which has maintained friendly ties with the North Korean regime in Pyongyang, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov expressed concern over the North's nuclear program, saying it "negatively affects the situation on the Korean Peninsula."

"In these conditions, Pyongyang's cooperation with the IAEA takes on special significance. We call on North Korea to cooperate with the agency," Losyukov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.