An international energy consortium for North Korea has decided to officially scrap its defunct project to build two light-water reactors in the communist state, South Korea's Unification Ministry said Thursday.
The decision comes amid a prolonged stalemate in international negotiations over the North's nuclear arms program.
"The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) held a meeting of its executive board in New York on Wednesday (New York time) and decided to officially terminate its nuclear reactor project," a ministry official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official termination of the nuclear reactor project in North Korea comes nearly five months after the organization pulled out all of its workers from the construction site in the communist state on Jan. 8.
Part of a 1994 settlement between North Korea and the United States after a standoff over the North's nuclear weapons development program, the nuclear reactors were an incentive for the energy-starved North in return for abandoning its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The 1994 agreement, known as the Agreed Framework, however, has been declared void by both Washington and Pyongyang following the eruption of a new dispute over North Korea's nuclear activities in late 2002.
The United States believes North Korea has already developed one or two nuclear weapons and possesses enough weapons-grade plutonium to produce as many as a dozen.
The US$4.6-billion project was suspended in late 2003 amid a prolonged boycott in the nuclear disarmament talks by Pyongyang.
The nuclear negotiations resumed last August after a 13-month hiatus, but the communist state has again been staying away from the talks since November.
"The government has worked to resume the light-water reactor project, but it was forced to terminate the project after consultations with other members of the (KEDO) executive board as current conditions, such as the prolonged stalemate over North Korea's nuclear program, make it impossible for us to continue the project," the ministry said in a released statement.
The board of directors, consisting of representatives from South Korea, the United States, Japan and the European Union, was to announce the official termination of the project at around 2 p.m. (New York time), according to Yang Chang-seok, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry.
A joint resolution, to be announced at the meeting, was to include details over who is to shoulder the costs of liquidating the multi-billion dollar project, but it was not to be released to the public, according to the ministry spokesman.
The country's Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) was to shoulder all the costs of clearing the now defunct reactor project site in return for rights to all of KEDO's existing materials, including nuclear reactor parts, outside of North Korea, according to ministry officials on condition of anonymity.
It was expected to cost between $150 million to $200 million to clear the site, according to the officials.
They said all of KEDO's materials and equipment would have a total value of $830 million. The South Korean power utility is to be entitled to full possession and use of the materials and reactor parts, which may be used to build nuclear reactors here or elsewhere, the officials said.
"What is clear is that KEPCO would not take any financial loss and that there will be no additional costs for the government," one ministry official said.
Still, the South Korean government is expected to take the severest damage from the termination of the near-12-year project.
More than $1.56 billion has already been spent on the $4.6-billion project, over $1.13 billion of which came from South Korea.
Ministry officials admitted there was no way of retrieving the wasted money, but said, "we are not the only one to sustain a loss."
Japan put in some $407 million, despite being originally supposed to shoulder 22 percent of construction costs, the officials said. The European Union spent $18 million.
The present dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials visiting the communist state accused Pyongyang of running a clandestine nuclear arms program in violation of the 1994 agreement.
North Korea has agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives, but it has been boycotting the nuclear talks since a November round in 2005.
Pyongyang says it will not return to the talks until Washington lifts financial sanctions on a Macau bank suspected of circulating counterfeit U.S. dollars printed in North Korea, while the U.S.
insists the financial issue has nothing to do with the nuclear negotiations.
The talks are attended by the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the two Koreas.
SEOUL, June 1 (Yonhap)
KEDO terminates nuclear reactor project in N. Korea amid nuclear |
