North Korea threatens to exit nuclear weapons talks

North Korea on Tuesday ordered international nuclear inspectors out of the country and said it would “never again” take part in denuclearization talks, dealing a harsh, early setback to the Obama administration’s hopes of disarming the defiant regime.

In a strident reaction to a United Nations rebuke over its recent rocket launch, the government in Pyongyang took several provocative actions, including announcing that it would resume building nuclear weapons.

The White House said North Korea had taken “a serious step in the wrong direction,” but it offered no hint as to how it plans to restart the long-stalled drive to abolish the communist nation’s nuclear program.

The presence of international inspectors and ongoing multinational negotiations have provided U.S. officials a partial sense of security, even without significant steps toward an agreement.

North Korea periodically seeks to block the constant scrutiny of inspectors and diplomats, and it may have used those periods to press for technological advances.

For instance, North Korea suspended talks for most of 2006, saying it was protesting U.S. financial sanctions. During that time, it test-fired seven missiles and conducted an underground nuclear test.

Analysts said this week’s developments could force U.S. officials to take steps they have long avoided, such as approaching North Korea for one-on-one talks to rekindle broader negotiations involving China, Russia, Japan, the United States and North and South Korea, participants in what are known as the six-party talks.

North Korea took the formal step Tuesday of giving official notice to the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency that it wanted U.N. inspectors to leave, and disclosed plans to restart its plutonium production facility.

“There is no need for six-party talks anymore,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Despite the ominous developments and the problems they pose for President Obama, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration was “quite pleased” with Monday’s U.N. Security Council rebuke, which had been strenuously pushed by the administration.

Nonetheless, some officials acknowledged that the resumption of the six-party talks, a top goal of the administration, was likely to be put off indefinitely.

Charles L. Pritchard, who was a North Korea negotiator for both the Bush and Clinton administrations, said that while the talks may not be dead, “they’re going to be on ice for quite a while.” He noted that North Korea had previously broken off the talks for more than a year, the period between 2005 and 2006.

Last September, North Korea temporarily removed inspectors from the plant at the sprawling Yongbyon nuclear compound where it had previously processed weapons-grade plutonium. At that time, North Korea was believed to have enough for as many as 10 bombs.

North Korean officials had made clear they were angry because the United States had not followed through on a pledge to remove their nation from a list of countries the U.S. says sponsor terrorism.

U.S. officials had been urging Security Council members for more than a week to condemn the most recent launch, which it viewed as a test of Pyongyang’s intercontinental missile capability, and a breach of Security Council resolutions. North Korean officials contended the April 5 launch was legal and intended only to boost a communications satellite into orbit.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have said that if there was a satellite on the rocket, it did not make it to orbit, contradicting North Korean declarations that the satellite was broadcasting patriotic music to Earth.

Initially, China and Russia resisted efforts to censure the North Koreans. However, U.S. and Japanese diplomats, along with others, succeeded Monday in persuading all 15 Security Council members to agree to a compromise, a nonbinding statement that chastised Pyongyang for violating U.N. resolutions.

U.S. officials said they were aware that North Korea was threatening to walk out on the talks, but they believed world powers could not ignore Pyongyang’s brazen flouting of U.N. resolutions with its rocket launch.

The White House deplored North Korea’s vow to withdraw from the talks and restart its nuclear program. “We call on North Korea to cease its provocative threats,” Gibbs said.

The United States has also asked the United Nations sanctions committee to develop a list of companies and organizations to target.

Past economic sanctions have had little or no effect on Pyongyang. But U.S. officials said the importance of the United Nations statement was to demonstrate that key players in the region -- notably China, which has the greatest leverage -- were united.

“They are further isolating themselves,” a U.S. official said, explaining strategy considerations on condition of anonymity.

Even so, U.S. officials have signaled that they consider the rebuke of North Korea just a detour from their goal of broader international talks. On April 3, Stephen Bosworth, the special U.S. envoy for North Korea, said the U.S. wanted to return to the talks “as soon as the dust has settled” from the launch.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told National Public Radio on Monday evening that it was “reasonable to expect” that the U.N. action “would result for a period of time in a further pause in these six-party talks.”

Pritchard, the former negotiator, said the Obama administration ultimately may feel compelled to engage the North Koreans in one-on-one talks to bring them back to the six-party negotiations. Officials of both the Bush and Obama administrations avoided such one-on-one talks, believing the United States has more leverage when it is moving in concert with the other regional powers.

Pritchard, now president of the Korea Economic Institute, which promotes U.S.-South Korean ties, said a key diplomatic question for the United States is how long it should wait before making an overture to North Korea.

But he added: “Ultimately, we’ll get there.”

In Seoul, South Korean officials said they would react to North Korea’s declarations “in a calm manner,” but said that Pyongyang’s response to the U.N. actions was “stronger than expected considering such strong words as ‘never’ were used,” a South Korean Foreign Ministry official told Yonhap news agency.

Some Asian analysts were dismayed at North Korea’s words.

“Isn’t this what the United States expected?” asked Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, noting the American call for sanctions.

--

paul.richter@latimes.com

john.glionna@latimes.com