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US urges China to intercede on N. Korea
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-16 12:43
"The basic stumbling block has to do with the issue of providing a
light-water reactor," North Korean spokesman Hyun Hak Bong said Thursday in the
first comment from the delegation since the talks resumed.
Still, Hill and other delegates said the talks would continue, with no end
date set.
The United States has said giving such a reactor to the North is out of the
question.
North Korea was offered two light-water reactors as a reward under a 1994
agreement with the United States to give up weapons development brokered by the
Clinton administration. Light-water reactors are less easily diverted for
weapons use.
Construction on those reactors was halted in 2002 with the outbreak of the
latest nuclear standoff, when U.S. officials said the North admitted to secretly
pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration has been loudly
critical of the earlier deal.
"This is a problem related to the United States' political will to get rid of
its hostile policy toward us and peacefully coexist," Hyun said.
But the North Korean spokesman added that his government still hoped to
"solve the nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue."
Hill called the reactor demand a "nonstarter."
North Korea, "not for the first time, has chosen to isolate itself," Hill
said Thursday evening. The country "has a rather sad and long history of making
the wrong decision on things."
The latest talks ended a five-week recess after the last session failed to
yield an agreement after 13 days of meetings.
On Wednesday, a Washington-based think tank released a satellite photo
showing that North Korea's reactor at Yongbyon has apparently been restarted.
The photo, taken Sunday and released by the Institute for Science and
International Security, apparently shows a steam plume rising from the plant's
cooling tower.
The reactor was shut down earlier this year and the North said its fuel rods
were removed, a move that would allow it to harvest more weapons-grade
plutonium.
North Korea is believed to have reprocessed enough plutonium for at least a
half-dozen bombs, and claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons.
However, it hasn't performed any known nuclear tests that would confirm its
arsenal, which Pyongyang says it needs to deter a U.S. invasion. Washington
denies it intends to attack.
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