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SEOUL: Senior US and South Korean officials will meet in Beijing Friday to discuss North Korea's apparent moves to restart its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor, officials said.
South Korea's foreign ministry, which overnight expressed "serious concern," said its nuclear envoy Kim Sook would leave for talks with his US counterpart Christopher Hill and Chinese officials.
The communist North announced last week it had stopped work to disable the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and would consider rebuilding it, because Washington had failed to drop it from a terrorism blacklist.
A six-nation denuclearisation deal is deadlocked because the North refuses to accept US demands for strict inspection of its atomic material including sampling.
The United States refuses to take the North off the terror list until it agrees on ways to verify the nuclear declaration it made in June.
A senior Seoul foreign ministry official told reporters that the North on Tuesday informed US personnel at Yongbyon that it has decided to start restoring the plants.
"It has been confirmed that equipment which had been disassembled and stored in a warehouse during the disabling work is being taken back to sites at Yongbyon," the official said on condition of anonymity and without giving details.
The North had also begun clearing debris of the cooling tower which it blew up in June in a televised symbol of its commitment to denuclearisation, he said.
The official described the work as a clear violation of the six-party agreement. "But it's not wise to overreact," he added.
He said the North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, has not yet shown any sign of expelling US monitors or officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency from Yongbyon.
In Washington the State Department said Hill would leave Thursday for the Beijing talks to discuss efforts to end the verification dispute.
But spokesman Sean McCormack expressed doubts that the North was taking steps to rebuild Yongbyon. He said it appeared to be moving equipment at the site but not rebuilding.
"To my knowledge, 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 Yongbyon facility," he told reporters.
The North last November began disabling the reactor and other plants under US supervision as part of the six-nation disarmament-for-aid deal. It says 80 per cent of the work has been completed.
The talks link the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
Japan also said the North appears to be moving equipment out of storage at Yongbyon and expressed concern.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sidestepped questions about the possible rebuilding but said the United States expects Pyongyang to comply with its "obligations."
"We are expecting North Korea to live up to its obligations and we will most certainly live up to our obligations," Rice said, conceding that the process of getting North Korea to agree to disable the plant has not always been smooth.
"Look, that process has had its ups and downs, as any complex negotiating process will," she said.
Nevertheless, Rice said, "we believe that we should keep moving forward.
Analysts said the latest work at Yongbyon could be a symbolic gesture of protest rather than a determined attempt to restart it. The reactor is more than 20 years old and near the end of its lifespan.
The disablement aims to ensure it cannot be restarted for at least a year.
- AFP/yb
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