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US wants N Korea to hold up its end of nuclear bargain

A US envoy attending a ceremony in North Korea to mark the start of work on two western-financed nuclear reactors, told Pyongyang yesterday it must now honor its side of the bargain.

Pouring concrete for the power-plant foundations had symbolism well beyond the remote construction site at Kumho, on North Korea's east coast.

The multinational Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) consortium is building the two light-water reactors under a 1994 US-North Korean deal which froze the North's suspected nuclear-weapons program in exchange for the reactors and annual supplies of fuel oil.

"Today's concrete-pouring is a milestone which shows that this project, essential to establishing peace on the Korean peninsula, is firmly set on its course, despite having faced many difficulties and setbacks," Chang Seung-sup, chairman of KEDO's executive board, said in a speech.

US delegate to KEDO Jack Pritchard, the most senior US official to visit the North since late 2000, said it was now the North's turn to deliver.

Pritchard said yesterday's ceremony and the work completed were hard evidence of US seriousness, and that of KEDO, in keeping their end of the 1994 Agreed Framework.

"It is now time for us to see the same kind of tangible progress by the DPRK in meeting its commitments," Pritchard said.

DPRK is the acronym for the North's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Under the 1994 agreement, North Korea undertook to allow in International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors but has yet to do so.

KEDO will only deliver key nuclear components to the plant in mid-2005, if North Korea has fulfilled its obligations to allow inspections of frozen sites and atomic material.
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