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SEOUL: Hopes rose on Friday that North Korea will start its promised nuclear shutdown, despite North's military saying US hostility could still scupper the disarmament deal.
"I do believe that the North Koreans will shut down the reactor. They say that they have made a strategic choice to get rid of their nuclear weapons programmes," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor, which produces raw material for bomb-making plutonium, is at the heart of the North's nuclear programme which culminated in its first atomic weapons test last October.
The North has said it will consider closing Yongbyon as soon as it receives the first shipment of fuel oil – compensation for the shutdown under a February pact – from South Korea. A tanker was due to arrive early Saturday.
The communist state's military, in a strongly-worded statement, lashed out at "anti-DPRK (North Korea) fanatics" in the US. It said a six-nation February disarmament deal could be scrapped if they keep pressuring the country.
A statement by the chief of the military mission in the truce border village of Panmunjom said the North will step up efforts to protect itself from a "US nuclear attack and pre-emptive strike" if the US keeps "pressurising the DPRK under the pretext of the nuclear issue".
"In that case, it is as clear as noonday that neither the implementation of the February 13 agreement nor success of the six-party talks will be possible," the mission said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
The statement also called for military talks with the United States in the presence of a UN representative to discuss security on the peninsula.
It said it was ready to hold such talks "in any place and at any time".
Analysts said the statement was aimed at gaining the upper hand in possible future negotiations about a pact formally ending the 1950-53 war on the peninsula. The conflict was ended by an armistice.
"This proposal is aimed at taking the initiative in starting talks on the issue of replacing the armistice with a peace system, which should come in parallel with progress in efforts to resolve the nuclear issue," said Kim Keun-Sik, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.
"This is not going to impose any obstacle to the six-party talks."
Those talks, grouping the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, will resume Wednesday to discuss steps towards full denuclearisation after Yongbyon is shut down under the supervision of the UN's atomic agency.
North Korea has repeatedly said it needs atomic weapons to ward off the threat of a US attack aimed at toppling the Pyongyang regime.
"North Korea is seeking to gain the upper hand in future talks on establishing a peace system on the Korean peninsula. But this proposal will have no serious impact on the six-party process," Baek Seung-Joo of the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses told AFP.
An International Atomic Energy Agency team, which arrived on Friday in Beijing en route to Pyongyang on Saturday, was optimistic.
"With the kind of help we have got from the DPRK in the last few weeks, we think we will do our job in a successful way," said its leader Adel Tolba.
Under the six-nation pact the energy-starved North will receive one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees, if it declares and dismantles all nuclear programmes.
Negotiations on a "permanent peace regime" are part of the package.
Yongbyon's closure, to be rewarded with an initial 50,000 tons of oil from South Korea, is the first step.
Rice, speaking in a TV interview on Thursday, said that at some point the North would have to account for activity at Yongbyon.
"But I think we are seeing good signs that they're going to invite the IAEA inspectors in."
- AFP/so
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