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North Korea Reportedly Restarts Work on Two Reactors

A North Korean nuclear reactor project could be completed by next year, and any military strike against the installation would result in “all-out war,” senior North Korean officials told a visiting U.S. newspaper columnist (see GSN, July 11).

North Korean Foreign Ministry official Li Gun said the 50-megawatt reactor would be “completed this year or next,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in today’s New York Times.

“To defend our sovereignty and our system ... we cannot but increase our number of nuclear weapons as a deterrent force,” Li Chan Bok, a North Korean army general, told Kristof.

Pyongyang has also resumed building a larger 200-megawatt reactor at another site, officials said. Completion might be two to three years away.

Both projects were halted in 1994. The CIA has estimated that, when operational, they could produce plutonium for 50 nuclear weapons annually (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, July 12).

South Korea is willing to provide electricity to North Korea if Pyongyang pledges to relinquish its nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported today.

“In order to resolve the nuclear issue, we are willing to transmit power to North Korea if the North agrees on the dismantlement,” said South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young. The offer includes installing power lines in North Korea, according to AFP.

Chung added that he had discussed the plan with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a visit to Washington last month (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, July 12).

Seoul also plans to provide 500,000 tons of rice as well as raw materials for clothing, shoes and soap to North Korea, according to the Associated Press.

Rice said the offer was made in response “to the really miserable humanitarian situation of the North Korea people” and would “not in any way undercut the [nuclear] talks” planned for this month (George Gedda, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, July 12).

Rice also warned that no progress would be made at the talks unless North Korea was prepared to relinquish its nuclear program, AP reported.

“What we really need is a strategic decision on the part of the North that they are indeed ready to give up their nuclear weapons program,” she said.

“Without that, these talks cannot be successful,” she said.

“We’re ready to negotiate seriously. We are prepared to roll up our sleeves and do everything we can to make these talks a success,” she said (Gedda, Associated Press II/Yahoo!News, July 12).

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied reports suggesting the Bush administration might offer North Korea new incentives to resolve the standoff

“Five countries put a proposal on the table one year ago, we want to see North Korea come back to the talks with a serious response to that proposal,” McClellan said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, July 11).

A former South Korean negotiator with Pyongyang said yesterday that North Korea could demand to be treated as a nuclear power once talks resume, the Financial Times reported.

“I think that, inside the talks, they are going to demand that North Korea be treated as one of the nuclear club countries and if they come up with such a demand, the six-party talks can’t move ahead,” said Lee Dong-bok.

“That means North Korea is coming back to the talks not necessarily to resolve the nuclear issue but to earn more time so they can keep muddling along,” Lee said (Anna Fifield, Financial Times, July 12).

South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and Japanese Foreign Ministry official Kenichiro Sasae are expected to meet Thursday in Seoul to plan for the next round of multilateral talks, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, July 12).

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_7_12.html#A9A92C4B