Seoul - North Korea appears to be in the final stage of restoring a previously disabled nuclear facility, South Korean media reported Tuesday. "There are signs that the restoration of the Yongbyon facility is in its final stage," the Yonhap news agency quoted a government source as saying.
Pyongyang announced plans to restart work at the Yongbyon facility, which was disabled following a 2007 multilateral disarmament deal, early this year after the United Nations Security Council levied sanctions against the Stalinist state for conducting a long-range missile test.
In May, North Korea abandoned the six-party talks, also involving the United States, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan, following its second nuclear test and later announced plans to build more nuclear weapons.
North Korea said it was using the Yongbyon reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods for weaponization. In September, Pyongyang also admitted to near completion of an uranium enrichment programme, a second option for producing material for nuclear weapons.
Yongbyon's rebuilding casts doubt on recent statements by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il with high-ranking Chinese officials, where he said the regime was willing to return to bilateral as well as multilateral negotiations.
According to a statement by China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Kim said North Korea was willing to attend international talks only after bilateral talks with the United States.
"Through the DPRK-US bilateral meeting, the hostile relations between the two countries must turn into peaceful relations," Kim was quoted as telling visiting Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
"The DPRK's commitment to realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula remains unchanged," Kim said, referring to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
