03 September 2008

North Korea Not Rebuilding Yongbyon Nuclear Complex, U.S. Says

But North Korea still must give plan to verify halt to its nuclear program

North Korea demolishes the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear facility in June.

By Merle D. Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer

Washington — The North Koreans appear to be moving some equipment that previously had been stored at its Yongbyon nuclear processing facility, but they do not appear to be rebuilding the plutonium processing plant as North Korean officials had threatened August 26, a State Department spokesman says.

"To my knowledge, based on what we know from the reports on the ground, you don't have an effort to reconstruct, reintegrate this equipment back into the Yongbyon facility," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a September 3 Washington briefing.  "It has been taken out of where it was being stored."

U.S. and Japanese news agencies had reported that North Korea appeared to be reassembling its Yongbyon facility.  On August 26, North Korean officials threatened to restore the plutonium processing facility if the United States did not remove the country from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List.

McCormack, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency have inspectors at the Yongbyon facility now and are monitoring North Korean actions.

North Korea cannot be removed from the U.S. state sponsors list until it submits a plan that would allow international inspectors to verify that North Korea's nuclear program has been stopped.

President Bush announced June 26 that the United States would begin the process to remove North Korea from the list, which also includes Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan.  However, White House officials said that August 11 was the first day this could have happened, and North Korea had not yet submitted a verification plan.

"North Korea knows what it needs to do," McCormack said.  "Part of what they need to do is to complete work on the verification regime.  This isn't asking anything beyond what is the internationally recognized standards for a verification regime."

McCormack also announced that Ambassador Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator in the Six-Party Talks, is going to Beijing September 4 to consult with Chinese officials.  China is host to the Six-Party Talks, which also include North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Hill leaves September 4 and should return by September 7, McCormack said.  "It's to consult with the Chinese, who are the chair of the Six-Party process and who also have a unique relationship with North Korea, about how to move the process forward."

Since June, U.S. experts and North Korean engineers have been disabling key facilities at the Yongbyon complex, which is north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.  North Korea, as a symbol of its commitment, demolished the Yongbyon reactor's cooling tower in June.