The chief of a U.S.-led international consortium on Monday dismissed North Korea's demand for extra compensation for expected delays in building two nuclear reactors in the reclusive communist country. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, agreed in 1994 to build two light-water reactors in North Korea by 2003 and to provide heavy fuel oil in return for a freeze of Pyongyang's suspected nuclear program. KEDO chief Charles Kartman rejected that demand, saying 2003 was a target date, not a contracted date. Kartman said he planned to visit North Korea this summer but no date was set.
Verification is a major issue with North Korea's nuclear program.
Some U.S. experts suspect that the North may have extracted enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before freezing its nuclear program in 1994. The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South at the end of World War II in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty. E-mail this story to a friend.