Seoul: North Korea notified the United States that it planned to reassemble its nuclear facilities before it began moving mothballed equipment back into place this week, a South Korean official said today.

North Korea informed US personnel stationed at its Yongbyon nuclear plant and started moving some equipment disassembled from the plutonium-producing facilities out of storage on Wednesday, a Foreign Ministry official said.

"They were moving some equipment to the original sites," said the official, citing information provided by the United States. He did not say what the equipment was, and spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the issue s sensitivity.

"This is a clear violation of the six-party agreement," he said, referring to a disarmament pact that North Korea reached with the United States and four other nations last year. The official said South Korea would try to persuade North Korea to reverse its action.

North Korea had publicly warned of such a move last week after halting work to disable the facilities at Yongbyon, including its main nuclear reactor, claiming Washington had failed to honour a pledge to remove it from a US blacklist of states sponsoring terrorism under a deal reached last year.

Washington has demanded that North Korea first agree to a plan to verify an accounting of its nuclear programs it submitted in June before being taken off the list.

The US played down North Korea s latest actions.

"Based on what we know from the reports on the ground, you don't have an effort to reconstruct, reintegrate this equipment back into the facility," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Source : PTI