South Korea won't tolerate North's nuclear effort

South Korea will never tolerate its rogue neighbour’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, President Kim Dae-jung said today.

As he spoke, communist North Korea began moving fresh fuel rods into a mothballed nuclear reactor – a move described by the UN’s nuclear chief as “very worrying.”.

Dae-jun told a special Cabinet meeting that the stand-off should be resolved through dialogue despite deepening concerns that North Korea will restart facilities that experts say could produce nuclear weapons within months.

“We can never go along with North Korea’s nuclear weapons development,” Kim said. “We must closely cooperate with the United States, Japan and other friendly countries to prevent the situation from further deteriorating into a crisis.”

Kim, whose five year term ends in February, was the architect of a policy of engagement with North Korea that resulted in a historic summit and agreement to pursue national reconciliation in 2000.

His successor, Roh Moo-hyun, has also advocated dialogue to ease nuclear tensions since he was elected to the nation’s top job last week.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said: “The big worry is if they start to operate the reprocessing plant that will produce plutonium, which can be directly used to manufacture nuclear weapons - and there again we have no way to verify the nature of the activity.

“So the situation is very worrying.”

North Korea announced earlier this month that it planned to restart its nuclear facilities to get badly needed electricity, though American officials have said that the power obtained from the reactor would be negligible.

State media in Pyongyang defended the decision today.

“The United States is going around trying to stir public opinion internationally, as though this is a sign of developing nuclear weapons,” Radio Pyongyang said.

“Our measure has got nothing to do with plans to develop nuclear weapons. Our republic constantly maintains an anti-nuclear, peace-loving position,” the commentary said.

In the past week, North Korea removed UN monitoring seals and cameras from its nuclear facilities, ignoring warnings by the United States and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency.

On Wednesday, North Korea again defied international opinion by moving fresh fuel rods from a storage house into a power plant that houses a five megawatt reactor at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, 50 miles north of its capital, Pyongyang, said the Vienna-based IAEA.

“They have moved a total of 1,000 fresh fuel rods to a storage facility at the reactor site, but they have not loaded any fuel rods into the reactor core,” IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.

Gwozdecky has said it would take “a month or two” for the Soviet-designed reactor to start running again. The reactor produces plutonium, the material used to make atomic bombs, as a residue.

By bringing the rods into the reactor building, North Korea is showing that its announcement to reactivate the nuclear facilities is not an “empty word,” said Chun Young-woo, a nuclear disarmament official in South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

Chun could not provide details on how the rods were being transported but said they are too heavy to be moved by hand. They are about three feet long and just over an inch in diameter.

In a deal with the United States in 1994, North Korea froze its suspected plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme.

Earlier this month, it decided to restart it after Washington and its allies halted fuel oil supplies as punishment for revelations in October that it had moved forward with a second nuclear weapons program that used enriched uranium.

Gwozdecky said there were no signs of activities by North Korean officials at two other key facilities that are of more serious concern – a storage area holding 8,000 spent fuel rods and a laboratory used to reprocess spent fuel rods to get plutonium.

US and IAEA officials say that the 8,000 spent fuel rods hold enough weapons-grade plutonium to make several nuclear bombs. North Korea is suspected of already having at least one such bomb.

The IAEA spokesman said the agency was not concerned in principle that the reactor could be used to produce electricity.

North Korea says the dispute can be settled only if Washington agrees to sign a nonaggression treaty. Recent weeks have seen a sharp increase in anti-US rhetoric warning that the situation on the Korean Peninsula was “on the brink of war.”

The United States, which is preparing for a possible war against Iraq, is seeking a peaceful settlement to the issue but has ruled out any talks before the communist state gives up its nuclear ambitions.

The stand-off has raised fears of another crisis on the Korean Peninsula like one in 1994 that some say nearly led to war. It was defused when North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually dismantled its nuclear program in exchange for energy supplies.