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SEOUL - North Korea said Tuesday that it has stopped disabling its nuclear plants and will consider restoring the Yongbyon complex as it accused the United States of violating a six-nation disarmament deal.
The hardline communist state said that because the United States had failed to remove it from a terrorism blacklist, work to make the plants unusable had halted on August 14.
"As the US refused to carry out the... agreement, a grave obstacle to the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula has been created," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement.
"Secondly, we will consider restoring the Yongbyon facilities to their original state in accordance with strong demands from our relevant agencies."
Washington says the North must accept procedures to verify a declaration of its nuclear activities before it can be removed from the blacklist, which blocks US economic aid and assistance from multilateral bodies.
The North Korean statement rejected US demands for strict procedures to verify the document delivered in June.
"It would be a big mistake if the US believes that it can carry out a search of our home as it did in Iraq as it pleased."
The North's statement questioned the value of six-party negotiations which began in August 2003 and group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
"When the six-party talks have degenerated into a circus where the strong bullies the weak as it pleases, what's the use of the six-party structure?" it asked.
The North tested an atomic weapon for the first time in October 2006, but later that month agreed to return to denuclearisation talks.
Under a deal reached last year, it began disabling the plutonium-producing reactor and other plants at Yongbyon last November under US supervision.
It says 80 per cent of the work has been completed.
The day after handing over the declaration, the North blew up the cooling tower at Yongbyon in a televised display of its commitment to the process.
The latest statement -- issued as Chinese President Hu Jintao is currently visiting South Korea -- said the US failure to act "is a clear breach of the agreement" since verification is not a precondition for delisting.
"Verification is a duty to be carried out by every party that should come at the last stage of the denuclearisation of the whole Korean peninsula," it went on.
US and North Korean officials held talks in New York last week, but failed to break the impasse over verification. The United States reportedly wants to conduct sampling of materials, unannounced visits and inspections of unreported facilities.
The North said Washington "has been pressing us to accept inspections in which they may visit wherever they want, collect samples and take measurements as they please."
It likened these demands to special inspections demanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the 1990s, "in breach of our sovereignty and which subsequently caused us to leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
"The US is making a robber-like demand that it will carry out unilateral inspections of us... throwing away the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in which the removal of the US nuclear threat is at the centre.
"We don't mind staying in the list of countries which are not humbled by the US."
- AFP/ir
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