(3rd LD) N. Korea to quit six-party talks in protest over UNSC statement

(ATTN: UPDATES with S. Korean official's quote, Russia expressing regret)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 14 (Yonhap) -- Challenging the U.N. Security Council's condemnation
of its rocket launch, North Korea said Tuesday it was withdrawing from nuclear
disarmament talks and restoring its partly disabled nuclear facilities.
Nine days after North Korea fired a long-range rocket, the U.N. Security Council
unanimously adopted a statement accusing Pyongyang of violating an earlier U.N.
resolution barring it from engaging in ballistic missile activity.
The statement, issued in the name of the council's president on Monday (New York
time), also demanded that North Korea forgo further missile launches and return
to six-party denuclearization talks.
Ahead of its April 5 rocket launch, North Korea warned that any U.N. action
against it -- or even considering taking action -- would rupture the six-party
talks that also involve South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.
"Now that the six-party talks have turned into a platform for infringing upon the
sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea)... the DPRK will never participate in the
talks any longer nor will it be bound to any agreement of the six-party talks,"
the country's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean
Central News Agency.
Pyongyang says the rocket launch was part of its space development program and
insists it has successfully orbited a satellite, a claim refuted by outside
monitors who say they have not detected any new object in space.
The North's ministry said "throughout history the UNSC has never taken issue with
satellite launches."
In the more-detailed Korean version of the statement, the ministry noted that
Pyongyang followed international rules governing satellite launch procedures,
joining space treaties and giving notice to U.N. agencies of its launch date and
orbiting coordinates.
Still, the ministry accused the U.N. of taking up the "brigandish" logic of the
U.S. and Japan.
North Korea further warned it will start restoring nuclear facilities it has been
disabling under a 2007 aid-for-denuclearization deal. The Korean language report
said specifically that North Korea will consider building a nuclear reactor.
The North was promised two light-water reactors in exchange for freezing its
nuclear activities in a 1994 bilateral deal with the U.S. But the agreement
collapsed in late 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret
uranium enrichment program, sparking a fresh nuclear standoff.
North Korea tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, but after the landmark agreement in
2007 it began disabling its major nuclear facility in Yongbyon later that year.
In response, the U.S. removed the North from its list of terrorism-sponsoring
nations in October last year.
North Korea will "bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense in every way,"
its ministry said.
"It will take the measure for restoring to their original state the nuclear
facilities which had been disabled," the ministry said, "and fully reprocess the
spent fuel rods churned out from the pilot atomic power plant as part of it."
Seoul officials said North Korea's response was stronger and faster than
expected, coming just hours after the U.N. statement was issued and using such
absolute terms as "never." The South Korean government may release a formal
statement later, a foreign ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
Russia's government responded quickly, criticizing North Korea for quitting the
six-nation talks. "This decision will obviously not help achieve the goals we set
for ourselves in the settlement of problems on the Korean Peninsula," the Russian
Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Tass news agency.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul,
said North Korea was taking the toughest action available to it to protest the
U.N. statement.
"Quitting the six-party talks is the last resort," Yang said. "It's not a
warning, but an action. North Korea is saying, 'We've done all that is required
according to international procedures, but now that the U.N. is siding with those
in power, we'll go our own way to defend ourselves.'"
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)