yongbyon

The DPRK said about a week ago it had stopped disabling its nuclear facilities and considered restoring the Yongbyon nuclear reactor .

The threat comes within days of Pyongyang saying it had begun reprocessing spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

In other words, whether Kim decided to restart Yongbyon or not, the decision itself was hardly out of character.

Yu suggested the North may be threatening the restoration of its Yongbyon facility as a means of gaining diplomatic leverage.

The United Nations said Friday Pyongyang had informed inspectors they will now be denied access to any part of the Yongbyon complex.

The United States, which has monitors at Yongbyon, said two weeks ago North Korea was observed moving equipment out of storage at Yongbyon.

Now Mr Kim seems to be preparing to auction off Yongbyon for a third time: to Barack Obama's incoming administration in America.

The sparkling centrifuges were close to a disabled plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, a site intensely monitored by US satellites.

The United States said Friday North Korea is continuing to take steps to reverse the shutdown of its Yongbyon reactor complex.

Spokesman McCormack said Pyongyang continues to move in the wrong direction with its activity at Yongbyon.

But since then, the talks have stalled over the failure of Pyongyang to verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear plant.

The inspectors, who had been monitoring the Yongbyon facilities since the 1994 agreement, were expelled from North Korea in December 2002.

Lawmakers were shown photos detailing the complex and its similarities to North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, according to a U. S. official.

Mr El-Baradei said Pyongyang appeared willing to shut down Yongbyon, its main nuclear reactor, once sanctions had been removed.

It also submitted a declaration of its nuclear activities, limited mainly to Yongbyon's plutonium production.

They also held out the possibility that Pyongyang's recent actions at Yongbyon are a negotiating ploy.

The North responded by ejecting international inspectors from the reprocessing facility at its main nuclear plant in Yongbyon.

The provocative statements were made as North Korea took initial steps to restart its plutonium-based nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.

In June 2008, Pyongyang blew up the cooling tower at its nuclear complex at Yongbyon to show its commitment to denuclearization.

North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in Syria, based on the design of its own reactor at Yongbyon.

The GBAE controls North Korea's nuclear programme, including the Yongbyon nuclear research centre and plutonium production facilities.

Under the deal, North Korea promised to shut down and seal its Yongbyon reactor in exchange for energy aid.

It has also destroyed the cooling tower at its reactor at Yongbyon.

Inspectors will be allowed back to sitesthat North Koreahas officially admitted to. So they swiftly returned to Yongbyon.

In the first months of the crisis, Pyongyang kicked out UN monitors and restarted Yongbyon.

In August it stopped disabling its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon and even threatens to undo the dismantling.

But last week, North Korea apparently began reassembling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, according to U. S. officials.

Reprocessing the remaining spent fuel rods at Yongbyon would give it one more bomb.

Pyongyang was offered 50, 000 tonnes of oil as an incentive to shut Yongbyon down.

Under a 2007 six-nation deal, it agreed to disable Yongbyon in return for 1m tonnes of fuel oil and other concessions.

North Korea's plutonium programme is based on the Yongbyon reactor, which is under US satellite observation.

Closure of the Yongbyon reactor was critical to progress because the facility produced the plutonium used in last year's nuclear test.

North Korea has been building a light-water reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex since last year.

This might deter North Korea from fulfilling its promises: to "shut down and seal" its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon;