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PARIS-North Korea has barred international inspectors from a nuclear reprocessing plant that produces weapons-grade plutonium and intends to restart activity there in a week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday.The decision by North Korea came as the Vienna-based nuclear agency also announced it had completed the removal of all seals and surveillance cameras from the plant, one of several sites at its vast Yongbyon nuclear complex, which processes spent nuclear fuel rods for plutonium. The removal was carried out following a formal request to the agency by the North two days ago.The reprocessing of nuclear fuel from spent fuel rods could begin within months, according to arms control experts. It would take years, by contrast, for North Korea to produce fresh nuclear fuel if it decided to restart its nuclear reactor, which is also on the complex at Yongbyon. The decision by the North was a serious setback both for the Bush administration and for an international nuclear disarmament agreement that was aimed at dismantling North Korea’s long-standing nuclear weapons program. The move comes amid growing uncertainty about the country following reports that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has been seriously ill.North Korea tested its first nuclear device in 2006, the fruition of decades of work to make a weapon using plutonium fuel.Estimates on how many nuclear bombs North Korea could wring from its plutonium program have ranged from 6 to 10. The Bush administration has also accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium.In Vienna on Wednesday, an I.A.E.A. spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming told reporters at the agency’s headquarters, “There are no more seals and surveillance equipment in place at the reprocessing facility.”She added that the North Koreans “also informed I.A.E.A. inspectors that they plan to introduce nuclear material to the reprocessing plant in one week’s time. They further stated that from here on, I.A.E.A. inspectors will have no further access to the reprocessing plant.”The White House quickly criticized North Korea’s step as "very disappointing." A spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said that a resumption of nuclear processing would "further isolate North Korea."He emphasized that the Bush administration was open to holding additional talks to preserve the agreement reached with the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia earlier this year to halt end its nuclear program."We strongly urge the North to reconsider these steps and come back immediately into compliance with its obligations" in that agreement, he said.While the request to remove the seals and surveillance equipment had been anticipated, the nuclear agency, the United States and the other governments involved in delicate diplomacy with the North Koreans had hoped that North Korea would not begin operations there again and that inspectors would still have access to the facility.More ominously, the move suggests that the North may be preparing to restart its nuclear weapons program at a time when the United States is distracted by the financial crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unrest in Pakistan.As of August, North Korea had about 5,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that could yield between six to 15 kilograms of plutonium, according to I.A.E.A. estimates.The plutonium can be blended with uranium again for use in a nuclear energy reactor or used to fuel nuclear weapons.Arms control experts estimate that if North Korea reprocessed all of its spent fuel rods, there could be enough plutonium for one to three bombs.The announcement of the decision was first made by Olli Heinonen, the I.A.E.A.’s deputy director general and head of the department of safeguards, to a closed meeting of the agency’s 35-country board of governors.In prepared remarks at the meeting, Gregory L. Schulte, the chief American envoy to the I.A.E.A., called North Korea’s move “unsettling.” He added, “We are working in close consultation with our six-party partners to determine the best way forward.”Although they are now barred from the reprocessing plant, inspectors remain elsewhere at the Yongbyon site, but North Korea has not told the nuclear agency whether the small permanent group of inspectors will be allowed to stay or whether they will continue to have access to other buildings there, a European official linked to the agency said.The inspectors have worked there, living in guest quarters on the site, since July 2007.The United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea have been engaged with North Korea in prolonged six-country negotiations, which produced an agreement in February 2007 for North Korea to abandon its nuclear activities in exchange for aid and diplomatic incentives.In July 2007, North Korea told the United States that it had shut down its nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon facility and readmitted an international inspection team.The move completed the first step toward reversing a four-year confrontation with the United States during which North Korea had made fuel for a small but potent arsenal of nuclear weapons.The shutdown of the reactor and the return of the inspectors allowed the Bush administration to claim that its strategy of rejecting the North’s calls for bilateral talks and insisting on negotiations that included North Korea’s neighbors finally was working.Since last November, North Korea had been dismantling the massive complex under the complicated disarmament-for-aid agreement.But last month, North Korea announced that it had stopped dismantling the facilities to protest the failure of the United States to remove it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.Amid reports that Mr. Kim was ill, North Korea seemed to harden its position last Friday, saying that it no longer wanted to be removed from the terrorism list. “We can go our own way,” a Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying.Officially, Washington has said that it will remove North Korea from the list after it permits inspectors to verify claims about its production of nuclear weapons.Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
As in the days of Noah...
