South wants reactors for North suspended

Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said yesterday that he told U.S. officials in Washington last week that South Korea wants to see the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea “temporarily suspended.”
There has been no progress on the project to build the reactors as part of an agreement between Pyeongyang and Washington in 1994, and the United States is believed to be contemplating a termination of the project on the basis that the agreement has been shattered beyond repair.
Mr. Yoon said he told U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that South Korea does not want to see the project terminated, in part because of the considerable investment that has been made in it.
A critical deadline passed at the end of August, when the failure to sign a liability protocol between the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization and North Korea put off the delivery of a key component that goes under the reactor.
The executive board of the organization, known as KEDO, did not meet to decide on the protocol last month, in anticipation of progress at the multilateral talks in Beijing. But a decision is needed, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the project. Mr. Yoon said South Korea wants that to be to “seal and preserve the sites for resumption of work in the future.”

by Kim Young-sae