North Korea Halts Nuke Program Dismantling

BEIJING — Less than two months after North Korea blew up the cooling tower of its main nuclear plant in a televised spectacle, the government yesterday announced it had suspended the dismantling of its nuclear program.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said it was responding to American delays in removing it from a list of "terror-sponsoring" states. The ministry said the suspension began August 14 and that the regime would next consider restoring some of what had been dismantled already at the main nuclear compound in Yongbyon.

President Bush asked Congress on June 27 to remove North Korea from the terror list, but the administration also has said that the measure wouldn't go through until America could verify a 60-page inventory North Korea had submitted of its nuclear program.

Secretary of State Rice made that point yesterday, saying: "We have made very clear ... that we were awaiting a verification mechanism that could assure the accuracy of the statements that North Korea made in its declaration."

"We actually are in discussions with the North Koreans, and I think we'll just see where we come out in a few weeks," she said, speaking in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where she was meeting with President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.

North Korea said in a statement distributed over its official news agency that the American insistence on verification infringed on its sovereignty and was a "brigandish demand of unilaterally disarming."

"The U.S. is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in the DPRK [North Korea] as it pleases just as it did in Iraq," the statement said.

This latest development is a blow to the Bush administration's hopes of claiming for the president's legacy the removal of the North Korean nuclear threat. The spectacular demolition of the cooling tower, which was witnessed by a State Department official and a CNN crew on June 28, raised hope that the long-running tussle over dismantling the nuclear program might be coming to a conclusion.

But longtime North Korea watchers expressed no surprise by the suspension.

"Nobody thought this was going to be easy," a North Korea analyst with the International Crisis Group in Seoul, Daniel Pinkston, said. "What is going on here is one of two possibilities: Either they have not been bargaining in good faith and have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons, or they are just trying to negotiate the best bargain they can."