North Korea said yesterday it was immediately reactivating a nuclear power plant at the center of a suspected 1990s weapons program.
North Korea's decision to restart the reactor, mothballed in 1994 after an international crisis over alleged production of weapons-grade plutonium there, escalates a two-month-long showdown with the US over a second nuclear program being pursued by Pyongyang.
Analysts said Pyongyang's latest move -- which it said it had been forced to take after a US-led decision to suspend oil aid to the country -- appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to force Washington to the negotiating table.
The announcement came exactly a week before South Korea's presidential election, a contest which will turn in part on the question of whether to embrace or sanction North Korea.
The reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, was frozen in 1994 after a year-long crisis ended with the Agreed Framework pact between the US and North Korea. The director of the CIA said that year that the agency estimated North Korea had produced one or two nuclear weapons.
Under the pact, Pyongyang promised to scrap plans to develop such weapons in return for provision of light-water nuclear reactors and fuel oil supplies.
In October this year, Washington said Pyongyang had admitted embarking on a new secret program, this time to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of the Agreed Framework.
Following that admission, Washington and its allies, including South Korea and Japan, decided to suspend fuel oil shipments to North Korea from December -- just as winter brought sub-zero temperatures to the destitute Northeast Asian country.
After weeks demanding that Washington sign a non-aggression treaty to defuse the row, North Korea's Foreign Ministry raised the stakes yesterday.
It said in a statement: "The prevailing situation compelled the DPRK government to lift its measure for nuclear freeze taken on the premise that 500,000 tonnes of heavy oil would be annually supplied to the DPRK under the DPRK-US Agreed Framework and immediately resume the operation and construction of its nuclear facilities to generate electricity.
"Whether the DPRK refreezes its nuclear facilities or not hinges upon the US," said the statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
DPRK is the acronym for the North's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A follow-up statement on KCNA added: "It is the invariable stand of the DPRK government to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula."
South Korea convened a special National Security Council meeting, and issued a statement expressing "strong regret and serious concern" at the statement, which Seoul said would raise tensions on the divided peninsula.
Japan called for a calm response to North Korea's statement, saying Pyongyang appeared to be seeking a peaceful end to the spreading row over its nuclear program.
"If you read the North Korean announcement carefully, their consistent stance is to seek a peaceful resolution," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.
"We need to respond calmly, based on close cooperation with the United States and South Korea."
In Beijing yesterday, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said that China agreed that North Korea should drop its nuclear weapons program and he was sure Beijing would help put pressure on Pyongyang.
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