North Korea admits disabling UN cameras at nuclear reactor

North Korea acknowledged yesterday that it had dismantled UN surveillance equipment from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

The move prompted condemnation from governments around the world.

Pyongyang's official news agency confirmed reports from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the North Koreans had broken seals and disabled UN cameras at the nuclear reactor, in what appeared to be a step towards resuming weapons-grade plutonium production at the plant. The head of the IAEA said Pyongyang started disabling the agency's monitoring equipment at five sites on Saturday and took further steps yesterday.

The North Koreans said they had no choice but to fire up the reactor to compensate for the loss of fuel oil imports from the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea.

But many regional analysts said the move was tantamount to blackmail – using the threat of nuclear war to pressure the Americans, in particular, into resuming shipments of oil.

The move was the latest indication that a 1994 agreement – in which North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programme and mothball the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for fuel oil shipments – had been broken.

The timing of the gambit, as America prepared to go to war against Iraq, appeared designed to embarrass Washington. In contrast to Iraq, military action against North Korea is generally considered out of the question. Pyongyang has said South Korea would be reduced to a "sea of flames" by nuclear weaponry within minutes of war breaking out.

A leading Democratic senat-or said the threat to America from North Korea's restarting of the plants was far greater than Iraq's weapons programmes. "This is a greater danger immediately to US interests, in my view, than Saddam Hussein is," said Senator Joe Biden, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"If they lift the seals on these canisters [at the plant], they're going to be able to build four to five additional nuclear weapons within months if they begin that reprocessing operation – that's within a year."

Lee Jung Hoon, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, told The Washington Post: "Clearly, this is a fierce game of chicken. We should be very worried about this. We are approaching the worst limits of this situation."