North Korea reprocesses fuel rods ahead of nuke crisis talks

COMMUNIST North Korea said yesterday it was "successfully reprocessing" more than 8,000 spent fuel rods under its controversial nuclear programme, which will be discussed with the US and China next week.

Days before the first formal talks in the six-month-old nuclear crisis, North Korea's Foreign Ministry said that the war in Iraq had taught Pyongyang that "it is necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent force".

"As we have already declared, we are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase, as we sent interim information to the US and other countries concerned early in March, after resuming our nuclear activities from December last year," the ministry said in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).