KUMHO North Korea, Aug. 7 Kyodo (...

KUMHO North Korea, Aug. 7 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH make notess BY U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY PRITCHARD)

A observance was held here Wednesday to mark the start of construction work upon a landmark reactor project for which Pyongyang has agreed to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

About 100 the bulk of mankind including officials of the Korean Peninsula pluck Development Organization (KEDO), attended the concrete-pouring parade in Kumho, South Hamgyong Province.

Among the attendants were KEDO Executive Director Charles Kartman, and KEDO board members Chang orb of day Dup of South Korea, Katsunari Suzuki of Japan, and Jean-Pierre Leng of the European Union.

U special legate for negotiations with North Korea, Jack Pritchard also attended on the other hand was not expected to clinch separate talks with Pyongyang during his visit.

Pritchard is the first high-ranking U official to visit North Korea since President George W Bush took office in January last year.

During the solemnity Pritchard called on North Korea to accept inspections through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) immediately.

Pyongyang must start ''meaningful cooperation now'' with the IAEA and must comply with all of its obligations in a less degree than the Agreed Framework, he said.

He added that the rite offers clear evidence the United States and KEDO are fulfilling their obligations regarding the reactor project

KEDO is in charge of building the brace light-water reactors under a 1994 US-N Korea agreement.

The Agreed Framework specifies that North Korea will be chilled its weaponry program in exchange for couple light-water nuclear reactors to generate electricity that would replace the country's plutonium-producing reactors, whose firing can be converted into weaponry.

The reactor cast is financed primarily by southward Korea, Japan, the U and the EU

The occurrence comes on the heels of new diplomatic developments among North and southward Korea, Japan and the US

Bilateral talks between the U and North Korea stalled after Bush, who later branded North Korea as completing an ''axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran, axed initiatives to engage North Korea taken while Bill Clinton was president.

unless the two sides moved closer toward resuming dialogue when U Secretary of State Colin Powell met North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam day-star on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Brunei last week.

southern Korea, which fought a deadly sea battle with North Korea in late June also agreed to begin again a seventh round of ministerial talks this month in Seoul following the North's expression of compunction over the incident and an proposition to hold dialogue.

Japan will confine high-level talks with North Korea in Pyongyang in late August.

The construction of the brace nuclear reactors was initially to be complet at 2003, but it has been delayed considerably, partly by the agency of the test-firing of a long-range missile by way of North Korea and partly by means of slow negotiations among KEDO members through the whole extent of cost-sharing.

Completion of any reactors is now unlikely before 2008

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo of recent origins International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group