Japan says North Korea is guilty of scrapping of nuclear power plants project

Photo: Japan says North Korea is guilty of scrapping of nuclear power plants project

Under the plan, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) planned to build two reactors in exchange for U.N. inspections of the country's atomic sites. But the project was formally killed off Wednesday by its sponsors, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union, because of North Korea's failure to give up its self-proclaimed nuclear weapons program.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe reiterated Thursday that Pyongyang did not keep to its side of the deal.

"As North Korea violated the promise I think we can say that the project's functions have already ceased," Abe said at a regular news conference.

In announcing its decision, KEDO also cited North Korean violations of agreements, including the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons that binds Pyongyang to non-weapons use of nuclear power and the Joint South-North Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The KEDO project was meant to replace an old Russian-designed graphite-cooled reactor, which can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with two more modern light-water reactors, which are more resistant to tampering and easier to monitor, the AP reports.

But the program was frozen in 2002 after the United States claimed North Korea had embarked on a secret weapons-development program by enriching uranium. Evidence backing the claim has never been publicly disclosed.