TIMELINE: North Korea's nuclear plant

(Reuters) - North Korea has begun reprocessing spent fuel rods to extract plutonium at its nuclear arms plant, its foreign ministry said on Saturday, further raising regional tensions already stoked by its defiant rocket launch this month.

Here is a timeline of international wrangling over Yongbyon.

* 1979: North Korea starts to build a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, aided by years of Soviet nuclear help.

* Dec 12, 1985: North Korea declares existence of the Yongbyon facility to the International Atomic Energy Agency and joins the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty requires IAEA inspectors to have regular access for monitoring.

* 1986: Yongbyon begins operation. Its main facilities are a nuclear fuel fabrication plant, the reactor and a facility to separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.

* July 1987: North Korea misses first 18-month deadline for the beginning of international inspections. Granted an 18-month extension, it also misses the second deadline in December 1988.

* May 1992: Inspections begin. The IAEA says North Korea has processed more plutonium than it initially disclosed.

* March 1993: North Korea rejects IAEA inspectors' request to see two undeclared sites and threatens to withdraw from the

NPT.

* June 1994: North Korea quits the IAEA, 20 years after it first became a member state.

* October 21: U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration signs an Agreed Framework with North Korea to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for aid.

* Dec 12, 2002: North Korea says it plans to restart Yongbyon reactor. By the end of the month it has disabled the IAEA surveillance devices there and expels the agency's inspectors.

The move comes two months after U.S. State Department envoy James Kelly confronts Pyongyang with evidence Washington says points to a covert uranium enrichment program.

* January 2003: North Korea quits the NPT.

* Sept 2005: North reaches deal with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and United States on "abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear program and returning, at an early date, to the NPT and to IAEA safeguards" at talks in Beijing.

* Oct 9, 2006: North carries out first nuclear test.

* February 13, 2007: North Korea agrees to start shutting its reactor and allow U.N. nuclear inspectors back into country in exchange for aid, the first step in a new disarmament deal.

* July 14-18: IAEA team confirms shutdown of five nuclear facilities in Yongbyon. It applies seals, and starts installing surveillance and monitoring equipment.

* June 27, 2008: DPRK demolishes cooling tower at Yongbyon nuclear reactor, as a sign of good faith in negotiations.

* August 26: Pyongyang says it will reverse disablement of Yongbyon facilities, angered by a Washington decision not to take it off its terrorism blacklist.

* Oct 11: U.S. says it will take North Korea off state sponsors of terrorism list, following verbal agreement on dismantlement. North says next day to resume disablement. IAEA soon granted access to key Yongbyon plants.

* April 5, 2009: North Korea launches a multistage rocket. A week later, on the 13th, the U.N. security council adopts a declaration condemning North Korea for the launch.

* April 14: North Korea's foreign ministry says the country will quit six-party talks, and re-start the Yongbyon plant, which can make arms-grade plutonium. It orders U.N. inspectors to leave.

* April 25: North Korea's foreign ministry says the reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant began as declared in the Foreign Ministry statement dated April 14.

Sources: Reuters, IAEA (here

3.shtml and here

ml) (Writing by Gillian Murdoch; Editing by Bill Tarrant)