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SEOUL — North Korea said Friday it will not take further steps to dismantle its nuclear program until the U.S. and its other negotiating partners award fuel oil and political benefits promised under an aid-for-disarmament deal.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement it has disabled 80 per cent of its main nuclear complex, but countries involved in six-nation disarmament talks have only made 40 per cent of the energy shipments promised to the North.
The energy-starved North was promised the aid equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil under the February 2007 deal with China, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States.
The ministry statement said North Korea has shown its resolve to disarm by destroying a cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex last week — a measure it says was required under the next phase of a denuclearization agreement.
“The other participating parties of the six-way talks should join (North Korea) in its efforts by honestly fulfilling their commitments,” according to the ministry statement, carried by the North Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea submitted a long-awaited declaration of nuclear facilities to China last week, raising hopes for a breakthrough in stalled talks on its atomic programs. In exchange, Washington lifted some economic sanctions against the North and began steps to remove it from a State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism — a process that could take 45 days.
North Korea said the U.S. has not yet officially removed it from the list due to procedural factors and relaxed sanctions have not been implemented in full. It did not elaborate.
Calls to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul were not answered Friday evening.
The North said it will only move on to the next phase of the denuclearization process — to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons programs — when it has been awarded all the energy aid and political benefits promised under the deal.
“This is the basic requirement of the principle of ‘action for action' and the consistent stand of the DPRK,” it said.
North Korea's nuclear declaration, which was delivered six months later than the country promised and has not yet been publicly released, is said to only give the overall figure for how much plutonium was produced at Yongbyon but no details of weapons that may have been produced.
U.S. officials have stressed that the North Korean declaration still needs to be verified and that the destruction of the cooling tower is only one small part of the process. The North's Foreign Ministry said it is ready to co-operate in that verification only after its negotiating partners fulfill their obligations.
Experts believe the North has produced up to 110 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for as many as 10 nuclear bombs.
Moon Tae-young, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman, said his ministry was trying to determine why the North issued the statement at this time. He said no agreement has been reached on when to resume the six-party talks.
