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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, February 27, 2003

North Korea restarts reactor

By Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — North Korea has restarted a nuclear reactor it had mothballed as part of a 1994 pact with the United States aimed at halting its nuclear weapons program, a provocative step that further intensifies the crisis on the Korean peninsula, U.S. officials said yesterday.

On Feb. 7, North Korea released this photo of spent nuclear fuel rods stored in a cooling pond at its Yongbyon facility. Since then, U.S. intelligence has verified that North Korea has restarted its reactor there.

Associated Press library photo

While the North Korean government earlier this month said it had restarted the facility, U.S. officials have studied satellite photographs in recent weeks to see if the government would actually follow through with what was construed as a threat. In a move apparently timed to coincide with the inauguration of South Korea's new president Tuesday, North Korea flipped the switch on the facility within the past four or five days, one U.S. official said.

North Korean officials have insisted that the small research plant at Yongbyon, 55 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang, was necessary to produce electricity for the power-starved nation because the United States and its allies cut off fuel shipments late last year. U.S. experts, however, say that the 5-megawatt plant is not large enough to provide significant electrical power and can only be intended to produce plutonium for use in weapons.

The plant could produce enough fissile material in a year for a single weapon, about the size of the bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945, and the North Koreans do not appear to have restarted a reprocessing plant capable of turning 8,000 spent fuel rods into enough material for five or six bombs within a period of weeks. U.S. officials said they are bracing for that announcement, since they are increasingly convinced North Korea is determined to escalate the crisis to force direct talks with the United States — or amass a nuclear arsenal.

"With each step it takes to advance its nuclear capability, North Korea further isolates itself from the international community," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "I think this is another example of the regime of North Korea taking escalatory actions in order to gain concessions."

McCormick said the Bush administration seeks "a peaceful diplomatic solution, but all options remain on the table."

The administration has insisted that any discussions with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions take place within a multilateral forum that would include other key countries in the region. But Secretary of State Colin Powell failed to win much support for this approach during a just-completed trip to China, Japan and South Korea. At the United Nations yesterday, China blocked a proposed meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council to discuss North Korea, saying the timing was not right.

The United States and North Korea have been in a standoff since October when North Korean officials admitted pursuing a covert program to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium. The Bush administration demanded that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dismantle all his nuclear weapons programs before any negotiations could take place. After the United States cut off fuel oil shipments, North Korea evicted international inspectors who had watched the plant since it was closed and withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The administration, focusing on its looming confrontation with Iraq, has tried to downplay tensions over Korea. But North Korea has continued to ratchet up the pressure. "If nothing else, (Kim) is pretty good at exploiting the opportunities coming his way," a senior U.S. official said.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a specialist in North Korea's nuclear programs, said officials in Pyongyang "believe they have a very strong hand and know if the U.S. thought they were bluffing, it would collapse their whole strategy."

Albright added, "I believe the North Koreans are not going to beg for a dialogue and they think time is not a friend to the U.S."

Speaking to reporters on his flight home Tuesday, Powell — who was unaware of the new intelligence — said the North Koreans had not chosen to restart the reactor or the reprocessing facility. "I think that's a wise choice if it's a conscious choice, and not just the fact they haven't gotten it to the point yet where they can start it," he said.

U.S. intelligence agencies are closely watching for when North Korea restarts the reprocessing laboratory, which would give off a brownish plume that can be viewed from intelligence satellites. The plutonium processing also places the gaseous chemical krypton into the air, where its presence can be detected by specialized U.S. equipment.

Also yesterday, North Korea urged its people and armed forces to be ready for war, saying their nation could be the U.S. military's next target after Iraq.

North Korea says the United States is planning to send reinforcements into its coastal waters as a precursor of invasion. It fired a short-range missile into the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Monday, further escalating tension in the region.

In a dispatch by Pyongyang's official news agency yesterday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry accused the United States of planning war games in South Korea so that it could attack the North.

Later, North Korea said a U.S. spy plane made a new intrusion over the country. North Korea's state-run news agency said the RC-135 reconnaissance plane flew above the country on an intelligence mission, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, which monitors dispatches from Pyongyang.

"This is an outrageous violation on our republic's sovereign rights and a clear violation of international laws," the North's agency was quoted as saying. "We warn that we will take stern self-defense measures."

North Korea made the same accusation Tuesday, noting that flight signaled that the United States was trying to "find an opportunity to mount a pre-emptive attack."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.