North Korea willing to freeze nuclear reactors

Paraphrased by:
Steve Waldrop
January 12, 2004

North Korea offered to freeze its nuclear reactors producing weapons grade plutonium if compensated by the United States, its official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

If the Bush administration was willing to compensate, North Korea "is willing to freeze its nuclear activities based on the graphite-moderated reactors as a starting point for the denuclearization of the country," KCNA said quoting a foreign ministry spokesman.

North Korea has recently made a series of overtures over the long-running nuclear standoff with the United States in an indication of Pyongayang's willingness to negotiate with Washington.

North Korea has previously admitted that it fired up the reactors at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon facillity, intensifying the latest nuclear crisis that began in October 2002.

The 15-month standoff started when the United States accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program violating a 1994 nuclear safeguard accord to mothball the Yongbyon plant.

Washington soon halted its fuel oil shipments to the energy-strapped communist country. In retaliation, Pyongyang said it reactivated the Yongbyon complex.

North Korea has since claimed that it reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which would yield enough plutonium for up to six nuclear bombs. But the North's claims have been met by scepticism here and in Washington.

The North's latest overture followed a recent visit to Yongbyon by two non-government US delegations, the first outsiders allowed in the nuclear complex since international monitors were expelled more than a year ago.

US congressional aides Keith Luse and Frank Jannuzi,, along with US nuclear experts, inspected the nuclear complex at Yongbyon. They were the first outsiders allowed into Yongbyon since North Korea expelled UN inspectors in response to the cancellation of US fuel oil shipments to the energy-strapped country in December, 2002.

North Korea said it showed its "nuclear deterrent" to the unofficial US delegations, but stopped short of elaborating what was exactly shown.

US newspapers said the delegations seemed to have seen reprocessed plutonium, an ingredient for making nuclear bombs, although Keith Luse, a US Congress delegate, referred to the US and North Korean reports as speculative and warned against drawing "premature" conclusions.

Recently, North Korea proposed to refrain from producing and testing nuclear weapons in what it said was a "bold concession" to the United States, in return for concessions from Washington.

Diplomatic efforts to open the second session of six-nation talks aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis have so far failed amid differences over the scope of negotiations.

The first series of talks which brought together the United States, North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea ended inconclusively in Beijing last August.