North Korea to open up for cooling tower blast: media
SEOUL (Reuters) - Secretive North Korea wants to invite five foreign news companies to record the destruction of the cooling tower at its ageing nuclear complex in a show of its will to abide by a disarmament deal, media reported on Monday.
South Korea's top nuclear envoy said he expects North Korea to soon provide a full accounting of its nuclear weapons program as called for in an international disarmament-for-aid deal, and then blow up the tower to underscore its commitment to the pact, the daily JoongAng Ilbo reported.
U.S. news network CNN was one of the outlets invited, envoy Kim Sook said, adding one South Korean broadcaster would also be on hand for the event at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang.
In September 2005, impoverished North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives under an accord negotiated among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
It later agreed that by the end of 2007 it would provide a list of its nuclear programs as well as start taking apart its Soviet-era reactor, a plant that produces nuclear fuel and another that turns spent fuel into arms-grade plutonium.
It has mostly lived up to its pledges to disable the Yongbyon nuclear complex, South Korean, U.S. and Japanese government officials said, but has yet to give a complete nuclear inventory and answer U.S. suspicions of having a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons and proliferating technology to the likes of Syria.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Nick Macfie)
