VIENNA-North Korea has expelled U.N. monitors from its plutonium-making nuclear plant and plans to start reactivating it next week, rowing back from a 2007 deal to scrap its atomic bomb program, officials said on Wednesday.
The reclusive Stalinist state said on Friday it was working to restart the Yongbyon atomic complex it had been dismantling since last November under a disarmament-for-aid agreement with five powers that has derailed in disputes over implementation.
Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency's head of non-proliferation safeguards, told an IAEA board of governors meeting that monitors verifying North Korea's denuclearization were forced to leave the plutonium plant this week.
"There are no more seals and surveillance equipment in place at the (plutonium) reprocessing facility," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, referring to the most proliferation-sensitive installation at Yongbyon.
"(North Korea) further stated that from here on, IAEA inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant," she said, summarizing Heinonen's remarks.
"(North Korea) also informed IAEA inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week's time," Fleming said outside the Vienna meeting.
Nuclear analysts have said North Korea would need several months at least to bring the installation back on line since it had been largely taken apart over the past year.
Confronted with the apparent unraveling of a foreign policy achievement by the Bush administration, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea's actions had "by no means" killed off the country's nuclear disarmament.
"Everyone knows what the path ahead is ... an agreement on a verification protocol so that we can continue along the path of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," she told reporters outside the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
"The North Koreans know that and so we will continue working with our partners on what steps we might need to take."
Rice said she had already had consultations with her South Korean and Chinese counterparts and would soon meet the Russian and Japanese foreign ministers.
South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said the situation was "very unfortunate" and reminded him of 1993, when North Korea balked at verification of its nuclear programs and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
"Although we are at an impasse, I'm sure that China, together with the other partners, will be able to solve this problem eventually," he told the Asia Society think tank in New York.
Diplomats close to the IAEA said the three monitors ousted from positions at the plutonium facility were still observing other parts of the Soviet-designed Yongbyon complex.
They said the monitors were forced to remove about 100 seals and 20-25 cameras from the plutonium facility.
North Korea has said steps are under way to restore Yongbyon to its "original state" -- reneging on a February 2007 accord with five powers to scrap its bomb program to emerge from diplomatic isolation and obtain major trade and energy benefits.
Deal Runs Aground
Last month, North Korea said it planned to restart Yongbyon because it was angry at Washington for not taking it off its terrorism blacklist. In early September, it made minor but initial moves to restart the plant, U.S. officials said.
Washington says it will de-list Pyongyang once it allows inspectors to verify claims it made about nuclear arms output. North Korea is demanding a more flexible verification mechanism, regional analysts said.
"What North Korea has done is troubling," said Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the IAEA.
"North Korea has a decision it needs to make. Is it going to continue to move forward and fulfill the commitment it made to abandon its nuclear weapons, or does it really prefer to go back to its past of isolation?" he told reporters.
Before Yongbyon's shutdown, U.S. officials estimated North Korea had produced about 110 pounds (50 kg) of plutonium, which experts said would be enough for six to eight nuclear weapons.
"The (IAEA) board expressed the view that a successfully negotiated settlement of this long-standing issue, maintaining the essential verification and monitoring role of the IAEA, would be important for international peace and security," said a chairman's summary of the governors' deliberations in Vienna.
North Korea readmitted IAEA non-proliferation monitors in mid-2007 to verify its dismantling of Yongbyon, four years after expelling U.N. watchdog personnel after U.S. accusations that it had a secret uranium-enrichment program.
In 2005, North Korea said for the first time it had nuclear arms capability and in 2006 tested a plutonium nuclear device.
Yongbyon consisted of a 5-megawatt reactor, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material could be extracted from spent fuel rods.
