North Korean nuclear reactor construction may be halted
|
Mon Jun 23, 2:43 AM ET
|
|
TOKYO (AFP) - A group in charge of the construction of light-water reactors in North Korea (news - web sites) under a deal intended to halt its development of nuclear weapons may suspend the project in August due to US opposition.
|
|
Washington says it is difficult to supply the parts needed to build the main sections of the nuclear reactors because Pyongyang has not signed a protocol agreeing to compensate for losses from any accidents, the Yomiuri newspaper said Monday.
The mass-circulation daily attributed the report to anonymous government sources.
Construction of the reactors started in August under a 1994 agreement between North Korea and the United States designed to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) -- which includes the United States, South Korea (news - web sites), Japan and the European Union (news - web sites) -- was created to undertake the construction of a five-billion-dollar plant containing the two 1,000 megawatt light-water reactors.
The reactors would produce significantly less weapons-grade nuclear material than an old nuclear plant constructed during the Soviet era.
The Yomiuri said South Korea has urged the United States to continue with the project.
But Japan is also inclined to suspend the project temporarily unless North Korea agrees to sign the protocol and shows a willingness to resolve in multilateral talks a crisis arising from its nuclear weapons programme, it said.
The nuclear crisis was triggered in October last year when the United States said Pyongyang had admitted in private talks with Washington to running a nuclear weapons programme based on highly enriched uranium.
On June 9 communist North Korea declared publicly for the first time in an official media dispatch that it was seeking nuclear weapons.
