Its destruction came in response to U.S. concessions announced Thursday to remove Pyongyang from terrorism and sanctions blacklists after the North delivered a long-awaited declaration of its nuclear programs.North Korea praised Washington's moves to lift sanctions but also urged the U.S. to completely abandon its "hostile policy" against the regime."The measure taken by the U.S. to lift the major sanctions ... should lead to totally withdrawing its hostile policy toward the (North) in all fields in the future," Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency."Only then can the denuclearization process make smooth progress," it said.The tower, designed to carry off waste heat to the atmosphere, is a key part of the North's five-megawatt atomic reactor. But its destruction carries little practical meaning because the plutonium-making reactor has already been largely disabled so it cannot be restarted easily.Still, the demolition offered the most dramatic moment yet in the disarmament negotiations—involving North and South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia—that have dragged on for more than five years and suffered repeated deadlocks and delays."It is important to get North Korea out of the plutonium business, but that will not be the end of the story," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Kyoto, Japan, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries.South Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Sook told reporters in Seoul that the disabling process would take several more months to complete, and that countries at the negotiations were discussing when to convene the next round of disarmament talks.North Korea's declaration does not address its alleged uranium enrichment program or suspicions of its nuclear proliferation to other countries, such as Syria.The declaration, which was delivered six months later than the country promised and has not yet been released publicly, is said to only give the overall figure for how much plutonium was produced at Yongbyon—but no details of bombs that may have been made.Experts believe North Korea has produced up to 110 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for as many as 10 nuclear bombs.
As in the days of Noah.....