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SEOUL: UN nuclear inspectors left North Korea on Thursday after the hardline communist state ordered them out and announced plans to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium.
A three-man team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Beijing but declined comment to reporters.
A separate four-member US team which had been monitoring the North's disablement of its Yongbyon nuclear complex was also preparing to leave after being ordered out, the State Department said.
The complex produced enough plutonium for a 2006 nuclear test and for several other bombs until it was shut down in 2007 under a six-nation disarmament deal.
The North, angry at UN censure of its rocket launch this month, announced on Tuesday it was scrapping the deal and would reopen the plants to build up its nuclear deterrent.
The UN inspectors removed their seals from equipment and rooms before leaving, a diplomat close to the IAEA said.
"It's a step backward. We're obviously concerned about this," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday, referring to the expulsion of the US monitors.
"They (North Korea) just bring upon themselves further isolation from the international community."
Wood said the United States would speak with other nations in the talks – China, Japan, South Korea and Russia – about the next step.
North Korea has previously threatened to quit the talks, which began in 2003 and several times came close to collapse.
But its Tuesday statement announced it would "never" take part in such discussions again and was no longer bound by any six-party agreements.
Pyongyang appears to be pushing instead for bilateral talks with the United States, analysts said.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the United States and its negotiating partners were "anxious for the North Koreans to come back to the table".
An apparently unfazed North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il on Wednesday watched a fireworks display marking the anniversary of the birth of his late father and founding president Kim Il-Sung.
He "warmly greeted" the cheering crowd that gathered along the Taedong River in Pyongyang to mark what the hardline communist state terms the Day of the Sun, official media said.
State media have trumpeted Kim's "incomparable courage and boldness" in going ahead with the much criticised April 5 rocket launch, which Pyongyang said was staged to put a peaceful satellite into orbit.
The United States and its allies said the launch was a disguised missile test. The Security Council in a statement on Monday condemned the launch as violating a resolution passed after the North's 2006 missile and nuclear tests.
It vowed tougher enforcement of sanctions contained in the 2006 resolution.
The United States and Japan on Wednesday submitted lists of North Korean entities targeted for sanctions, according to the Turkish diplomat chairing the first meeting of the Security Council's sanctions panel.
Diplomats said the US submitted a list of 11 North Korean entities involved in banned missile-related activities, while Japan put forward a list of at least 15.
South Korea, apparently mindful of increasing tensions, delayed a widely expected announcement that it would join a US-led initiative to seize international shipments of weapons of mass destruction such as missiles.
North Korea has said any decision by Seoul to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) would be seen as a declaration of war.
China indicated on Wednesday the time was not right for Seoul to sign up.
"The current situation is already too complex and China doesn't want it to become further complicated," its ambassador to Seoul, Cheng Yonghua, told a lecture when asked how Beijing views Seoul's move to join the PSI.
"We hope for respective parties to maintain positive and active attitudes and believe that tension should not be heightened," Yonhap news agency quoted Cheng as saying.
- AFP/so
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