N. Korea May End Nuclear Accord

North Korea threatened Tuesday to withdraw from a 1994 accord with the United States under which it would freeze its suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for two nuclear reactors.

To preserve the agreement, Washington must compensate for the loss of electricity caused by the delay in building the reactors because a power shortage has “created grave difficulties” in North Korea’s economy, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

“The reality is pushing us to the phase where we should make a final decision to go our own way,” the spokesman told the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, which was monitored in Seoul, the South Korean capital. Pyongyang has made similar threats in the past.

Under the 1994 agreement, a U.S.-led international consortium was to build two light-water reactors to meet the Communist country’s desperate need for power. In exchange, the North said it would freeze its suspected nuclear weapons program and allow international scrutiny.

North Korea has yet to open its facilities to inspections by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency and said Tuesday that it would not do so until there had been significant progress in the $4.6-billion reactor project.

U.S. officials suspect that the North may have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before it froze its program under the 1994 accord. North Korea denies doing so.

Pyongyang’s latest complaint came amid high-level talks between the North and South in Seoul and as South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s office announced that he will not attend a Liberation Day ceremony Thursday because he has symptoms of pneumonia.

Kim, 78, had been advised to rest instead of making a speech as he usually has on the anniversary of Korea’s Aug. 15, 1945, liberation from Japan, the presidential Blue House announced.

Prime Minister-designate Chang Dae Hwan is to read a speech at the ceremony instead of the president.