US urges China to intercede on N. Korea
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-16 12:43

"The basic stumbling block has to do with the issue of providing a light-water reactor," North Korean spokesman Hyun Hak Bong said Thursday in the first comment from the delegation since the talks resumed.

Still, Hill and other delegates said the talks would continue, with no end date set.

The United States has said giving such a reactor to the North is out of the question.

North Korea was offered two light-water reactors as a reward under a 1994 agreement with the United States to give up weapons development brokered by the Clinton administration. Light-water reactors are less easily diverted for weapons use.

Construction on those reactors was halted in 2002 with the outbreak of the latest nuclear standoff, when U.S. officials said the North admitted to secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration has been loudly critical of the earlier deal.

"This is a problem related to the United States' political will to get rid of its hostile policy toward us and peacefully coexist," Hyun said.

But the North Korean spokesman added that his government still hoped to "solve the nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue."

Hill called the reactor demand a "nonstarter."

North Korea, "not for the first time, has chosen to isolate itself," Hill said Thursday evening. The country "has a rather sad and long history of making the wrong decision on things."

The latest talks ended a five-week recess after the last session failed to yield an agreement after 13 days of meetings.

On Wednesday, a Washington-based think tank released a satellite photo showing that North Korea's reactor at Yongbyon has apparently been restarted.

The photo, taken Sunday and released by the Institute for Science and International Security, apparently shows a steam plume rising from the plant's cooling tower.

The reactor was shut down earlier this year and the North said its fuel rods were removed, a move that would allow it to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea is believed to have reprocessed enough plutonium for at least a half-dozen bombs, and claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons.

However, it hasn't performed any known nuclear tests that would confirm its arsenal, which Pyongyang says it needs to deter a U.S. invasion. Washington denies it intends to attack.

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