N. Korea Orders Ouster of Nuclear Inspectors

North Korea ordered the expulsion Friday of U.N. nuclear inspectors and announced it will reactivate a lab able to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The U.N. nuclear agency said its investigators were “staying put” for now.

The White House denounced Pyongyang’s moves, and U.S. officials said an envoy -- perhaps Asst. Secretary of State James Kelly -- would likely be sent to the region next month to confer with allies.

The North Korean move heightened tensions over its plan to unfreeze nuclear facilities shut down since 1994. The inspectors were the last means that the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, had to monitor whether the nuclear complex at Yongbyon is being used for weapons projects.

Despite IAEA warnings, the North removed monitoring seals and surveillance cameras from complex earlier in the week.

In a letter to IAEA head Mohammed Baradei on Friday, North Korea demanded the inspectors leave “immediately” and announced its intention to reopen the reprocessing lab.

Pyongyang said in the letter that it had decided to reactivate the Yongbyon complex after the United States canceled a shipment of fuel oil promised in a 1994 agreement that froze the facilities -- and because President Bush labeled the North part of the “axis of evil.”

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press, also accused the U.S. of making the North “the target for the nuclear preemptive strike.”

North Korea contends that it is restarting the reactor to generate badly needed electricity after the United States and its allies cut off oil shipments. The shipments were halted after recent revelations that the North Koreans had been covertly developing nuclear weapons in violation of the 1994 agreement.

Amid the rising tension, the U.S.-U.N. Command said Friday that the North had violated the armistice that ended the Korean War by bringing machine guns into the buffer zone separating the two Koreas six times in the last two weeks.

The command said that in each instance, the North Korean troops removed the weapons from the Demilitarized Zone at the end of each day. Under the 1953 armistice, only rifles and other small arms are permitted.

In Crawford, Texas, President Bush’s spokesman denounced the demand for the inspectors’ removal and called on Pyongyang to shut down its nuclear weapons program.

In Vienna, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said that “at the moment, our inspectors are staying put. They are on standby.” The U.N. nuclear watchdog currently has three inspectors in North Korea.

Baradei sent a response to North Korea’s atomic energy chief, Ri Je Son, demanding the North allow the inspectors to remain and install new seals and surveillance cameras at the site.

“The departure of inspectors would practically bring an end to our ability to monitor [North Korea’s] nuclear program or assess its nature. This is one further step away from defusing the crisis,” Baradei said.

Pyongyang said it was reopening the reprocessing lab to give “safe storage” to spent fuel rods that will come from the reactor it plans to restart. The IAEA did not comment on the report on the lab.

The lab can be used to extract weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods. North Korea already has 8,000 spent fuel rods in storage that experts say could yield four or five nuclear weapons within months. The KCNA statement, monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, made no mention of those stockpiled rods.

Meanwhile, the IAEA said the North was moving fresh fuel rods into the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. By Friday, about 2,000 new rods had been moved to a storage facility at the site, up from 1,000 a day earlier, spokeswoman Fleming said.

The reactor needs 8,000 rods to be started, Fleming said.

South Korea said it was sending special envoys to Russia and China “at the earliest possible date” to seek help in resolving the dispute.

“We consider all possibilities but for now our focus is on dissuading the North from restarting the radiochemical lab,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official who requested anonymity.

South Korea, the official said, is pushing to hold a three-way meeting with the United States and Japan early next year.