U.S. does not see North Korea rebuilding Yongbyon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that North Korea had begun to move stored equipment at its Yongbyon nuclear complex but could not confirm reports that it had begun to reassemble the facility.

A senior diplomat familiar with U.N. nuclear monitoring in North Korea and U.S. and Japanese media reports earlier said reconstruction had begun at Yongbyon, which was in the process of being dismantled under a six-nation denuclearization deal.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, however, there was no evidence of actual reconstruction. He said Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill, the lead U.S. negotiator with North Korea, would fly to Beijing on Thursday for consultations.

"Our understanding is that the North Koreans are moving some equipment around that they had previously put into storage," he told reporters, saying U.S. personnel were still at Yongbyon to oversee the previous deal on its disablement.

"To my knowledge, based on what we know from the folks on the ground, you don't have an effort to reconstruct, re-integrate this equipment back into the Yongbyon facility," McCormack added at his daily briefing.

North Korea announced on August 26 it would stop disabling its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear complex and accused the United States of violating the disarmament-for-aid deal negotiated by the two Koreas, China, Japan Russia and the United States.

Pyongyang said it did so because Washington had failed to drop it from the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list. The United States said North Korea must first agree on a system to verify Pyongyang's disclosures about its nuclear programs.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters the United States would live up to its end of the bargain and she played down the disagreement, saying the talks with North Korea have their "ups and downs."

NORTH KOREAN OBLICATIONS

"We are expecting North Korea to live up to its obligations and we will most certainly live up to our obligations," she said. "We are going to continue to work toward the completion of verification protocol ... we are in contact with our partners about doing that."

The State Department did not provide further details about what Hill, the U.S. pointman on North Korea, would do while in China. He is not traveling to any other countries in Asia, McCormack said, and will return to Washington this weekend.

The State Department announced his trip hours after reports surfaced that North Korea was reassembling Yongbyon.

Japan's Kyodo news agency said reconstruction began on Monday. It cited sources in Beijing close to six-party nuclear talks, which are hosted by the Chinese government.

Fox News, quoting U.S. officials, said the North Koreans were probably protesting a U.S. delay in removing the communist state from its terrorism blacklist.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has monitors in North Korea but an IAEA spokesman said on Wednesday he had no information on the current situation.

An agency report issued on Tuesday said North Korea had notified the IAEA already on August 18 that it had decided to suspend disabling work at the reactor. The activity had been under IAEA surveillance since November 2007.

Pyongyang began disabling the reactor and other facilities at Yongbyon in November as a step toward their ultimate dismantlement in exchange for economic aid and political concessions including removal from the U.S. terror list.

Proliferation experts believe the North, which conducted its only nuclear test two years ago, has already produced enough plutonium for about six to eight bombs.

The North's announcement that it would stop disabling Yongbyon confirmed the belief of some analysts that its communist leaders have no intention of giving up nuclear weapons, a diplomatic trump card that has repeatedly won them concessions in the past.

(Additional reporting by Philip Barbara in Washington, Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo and Mark Heinrich in Vienna; Editing by David Storey)