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North Korea lambastes Japan over nuclear fuel shipment

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February 4, 2001 

SEOUL, FEB 3 (UNB/AP) - North Korea accused Japan on Saturday of stockpiling nuclear fuel to make atomic bombs.

"It is the cherished desire of the Japanese reactionaries to go nuclear. To this end, they have made systematic preparations under all sorts of pretexts," said the communist North's state-run newspaper, Minju Joson. The article was carried by the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul.

Minju Joson was criticizing the latest shipment of MOX fuel - a mixture of uranium oxide and plutonium - from France to Japan.

A ship carrying the nuclear fuel left the French port of Cherbourg on Jan. 19, bound for Japan, despite protests by Greenpeace activists. It will take two months to reach its destination.

Japanese officials say that the fuel rods, produced by the Belgian company Belgonucleaire from plutonium reprocessed by France's state-owned nuclear group Cogema, will be used to generate energy at a Japanese nuclear power plant.

But North Korea claims that Japan intends to use the fuel to build atomic weapons.

The communist state signed a 1994 accord with Washington that committed it to halt its own nuclear power program amid suspicions it was trying to develop nuclear weapons.

In return, a consortium funded by the United States, Japan and South Korea is building two modern reactors in a rural village in the northeastern part of North Korea.

The light-water reactors will replace Soviet-designed graphite-moderated reactors, which experts say produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.