North Korea on Monday demanded compensation from the United States over a scuttled project to build two nuclear reactors in the communist nation under a 1994 agreement.Last week, the United States, South Korea, the European Union and Japan terminated the project promised under the 1994 so-called agreed framework, where the North agreed to scrap its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.
The decade-old light-water reactor project had been mothballed for the last two years with the outbreak of the latest nuclear crisis, after U.S. officials said in late 2002 that the North violated the earlier deal by admitting to a secret uranium-enrichment program.
"Now that the construction of the (light-water reactors) came to a final stop, (North Korea) is compelled to blame the U.S. for having overturned the (agreed framework) and demand it compensate for the political and economic losses it has caused to the former," an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. The spokesman claimed the move to shutter the reactor project proved the North was "quite just" in demanding simultaneous actions to build mutual confidence with the United States in exchange for disarmament.
To resolve the latest standoff, the United States has sought to convince the North to disarm at six-nation talks hosted by China. In September during those negotiations, the North pledged in principle to disarm, but afterward maintained that it would first need light-water reactors for electricity.
In the latest agreement, Washington and other countries agreed to consider the issue of giving the North a reactor at an appropriate time. At a summit this month of Asia-Pacific leaders in South Korea, President Bush said no reactors would be considered before the North gives up its nuclear weapons program.