Angry that the United States has not removed it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism, North Korea said Tuesday that it has stopped disabling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and will consider rebuilding it. We had this yesterday. This adds some detail. They're almost right -- NKor isn't one of the core terrorist havens, so they shouldn't be on the list. Their depredations are often criminal, but they're usually not terrorism.
The announcement comes two months after the communist North released long-awaited details of its plutonium program and dynamited the cooling tower at the reactor, moves that prompted the Bush administration to say it would drop North Korea from the terrorism list and lift some trade sanctions.
Since then, though, the United States has declined to take North Korea off the list, citing lack of progress in the North's promise to allow outside experts to verify the scope of its nuclear program.
North Korea halted work on disabling the Yongbyon plant on Aug. 14, according to a statement from the country's Foreign Ministry. Under U.S. law, the Bush administration could have removed North Korea from the terrorism list on Aug. 11. "North Korea decided to immediately suspend the disablement," said the statement, which was carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. It added that the North "will consider soon a step to restore the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon to their original state."