Jun 27, 2008, 13:40 GMT
Seoul - North Korea on Friday blew up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant in a move meant to show its intent to dismantle its nuclear programme in exchange for the easing of sanctions against the communist state.
The reactor in Yongbyon, 100 kilometres north of Pyongyang, produced the plutonium that North Korea used to conduct its first nuclear weapons test in October 2006.
Sung Kim, the head of the US State Department's Korea office, who was invited to the demolition, called it a positive step toward the next phase of North Korea's denuclearization.
The demolition of the 25-metre tower at the plant that was shut down in 2007 came a day after Pyongyang delivered a declaration of its nuclear programmes to China under an agreement reached at six-nation disarmament talks.
In exchange, the United States agreed to ease some of its sanctions against North Korea and remove the communist state from its terrorism blacklist.
The Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang greeted Washington's response as a 'positive step.'
The documentation on its nuclear programme is 'correct and complete,' said a ministry statement that was published in state-run media.
The United States has promised a thorough review of the declaration.
South Korean President Lee Myung Bak called North Korea's destruction of the cooling tower 'a politically symbolic event indicative of its determination to disable its nuclear weapons programme.'
But Lee - who has seen strained ties with North Korea since he took office in February after making inter-Korean cooperation projects conditional on the North's progress in dismantling its nuclear programmes - warned the demolition was an initial step.
'North Korea has many additional steps to carry out before its complete denuclearization,' he said.
A representative of the Chinese government also called the demolition an important symbolic move and a good basis for a continuation of the six-nation talks.
China is the host of the five-year-long talks to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programmes and create a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. The other countries involved are the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States.
North Korea committed to a three-step process to give up its nuclear programmes as part of the six-party talks. It first shut down the Yongbyon site in the middle of last year and is in the process of disabling the facility.
The demolition of the cooling tower was actually part of the final step, dismantlement.
Before North Korea shut down Yongbyon, it was believed to have produced enough material to make up to a dozen nuclear warheads.
At a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) in Japan, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura said Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, the United States and North Korea needed to press ahead with the six-party talks, which had reached a 'critical stage.'
'We expect North Korea to cooperate,' US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the meeting of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States while adding that there was still a long way to go.
The United States still had some open questions regarding uranium enrichment and proliferation activities by the communist state even as it prepared to remove Pyongyang from a terrorism blacklist in the next 45 days.
'We know that North Korea has a record of not always living up to its obligations, so we are going to monitor very carefully,' Rice said, waring of further consequences should Pyongyang not meet its obligations.
View blog reactions
If you liked this story please support M&C and Buzz the site on Yahoo.
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
Advertising
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)