North Korea pilfering nuclear reactor site: report

[Guest guest]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091230/world/international_us_korea_north_the\

ft

North Korea pilfering nuclear reactor site: report

2 hours, 32 minutes ago

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has been taking equipment left at a nuclear

reactor site when an international consortium halted work on grounds that the

communist state was breaking an agreement, a news report said on Wednesday.

If the report is true, the pilfering would be in defiance of a deal the North

reached in the 1990s with regional powers and could cloud a recent push to

restart international disarmament-for-aid discussions.

Billions of dollars were poured into the project to build two relatively

proliferation-resistant light water reactors for the North in return for a

promise to freeze its nuclear plant that produce arms-grade plutonium. The deal

was halted in 2002 with a third of the work finished.

North Korea may have used some of the more than 200 pieces of heavy equipment

taken from the site on its northeast to stage a nuclear test in May, South

Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said, quoting government officials.

" The removal of equipment without taking steps to settle financial issues is a

clear violation of the agreement and can be construed as theft, " one official

was quoted as saying.

South Korea bore the majority of the costs spent on the project arising from a

deal called the Agreed Framework, signed in 1994 by the United States and North

Korea. A consortium called KEDO to build the nuclear plants also grew out of the

deal.

Equipment left behind at the site is valued at 45.5 billion won ($39 million),

including cranes and bulldozers and nearly 200 trucks and other vehicles, the

JoongAng Ilbo said.

Most of the 6,500 tonnes of steel and 32 tonnes of cement left behind has also

been taken from the site by the destitute North, which is desperately short of

building material.

South Korea's Unification Ministry declined to comment.

North Korea was hit by U.N. sanctions after its nuclear test in May that experts

said further squeezed its already broken finances and may be pushing it back to

stalled talks on ending its atomic ambitions in the hopes of winning aid.

North Korea indicated it may be ready to resume dialogue after the first envoy

sent by U.S. President Barack Obama visited its capital this month for talks.

In an incident that could increase tension, North Korea on Tuesday said it was

holding a U.S. citizen who crossed into the state.

The North may use the arrest of activist Park, who said he was crossing

into the state to raise awareness about its human rights abuses, as a bargaining

chip with Washington in the nuclear talks, analysts said.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Ron Popeski)