Signs Of Activity At Korean Nuke Plant?

North Korea may be making good on its threat to begin processing spent nuclear fuel rods into material that could be used in atomic weapons, according to a newspaper account of what American surveillance satellites have detected.

The eye-in-the sky photographs are not conclusive, however.

The New York Times reports that satellites have picked up increased activity throughout the month at the North's Yongbyon plant, including trucks pulling up to the area where the spent rods are stored.

The space-based cameras cannot determine precisely what the trucks are doing, but it is possible they are moving the rods to a different location. That could be to hide the material or to reprocess it into bomb-grade plutonium.

While the Bush administration has made no official comment, officials tell the Times that reprocessing could be under way within a month — what one former U.S. arms control expert called "a fateful step."

"The North Koreans have to recognize what kind of signals they are sending here," Robert J. Einhorn, a Clinton administration official, told the Times. The North Koreans could produce enough plutonium for a bomb a month, officials estimate.

The Yongbyon plant is at the center of the current nuclear dispute. The plant was padlocked under a 1994 deal, in which the United States called off an air strike on the plant and agreed to supply the North with civilian nuclear power plants and fuel aid. In return, the North agreed to stop nuclear development.

This October, the U.S. confronted the North with evidence that it had started a separate, uranium enrichment program. The Bush administration cut off the fuel aid shipments, leading North Korea to declare the 1994 deal dead, expel nuclear inspectors and threaten to restart Yongbyon.

The Times reported the Bush administration may be keeping quiet about the suspected moves at Yongbyon — in contrast to its approach in Iraq — in order to avoid creating a crisis atmosphere on the Korean peninsula.

Publicizing the reports could force the administration to decide whether to launch a military strike against the plant — risky because it could touch off a larger conflict. For the North, the newspaper reports, moving to reprocess the rods could be a bid to increase negotiating leverage.

The North Korea on Friday rejected U.S. pressure to "internationalize" the dispute over its nuclear development and again demanded a non-aggression treaty with Washington.

"We are opposed to any attempt to internationalize the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and we will never participate in any form of multilateral talks," North Korea's ambassador to China Choe Jin Su said at a news conference in Beijing.

Choe repeated his government's demand for a legally binding non-aggression treaty. Washington has ruled out such a treaty but said it could provide a written security guarantee.

North Korea defends its demand for a formal treaty, arguing that the administration of President Bush has unilaterally scrapped a Clinton-era nuclear accord with Pyongyang. But a formal treaty would give the North much-coveted recognition from Washington, with which it has no diplomatic relations.

While trying to bring the nuclear standoff before the U.N. Security Council, the United States is trying to resolve the situation through multilateral channels.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said Friday that he hopes an emergency board meeting to deal with the North Korea crisis will take place Feb. 12 despite some disagreement among member states on when to hold such a meeting.

"I've already submitted the report to the board saying that North Korea is in noncompliance. So we need to get the board to certify that conclusion," he said. Once certified, the report would go to the Security Council.