N. Korea Threatens N-Program Restart

North Korea on Saturday renewed threats to reactivate its frozen nuclear program unless the United States makes concessions on providing the communist state with replacement reactors.

Negotiations have stalled over the North’s refusal to go along with a U.S. demand that it accept a lead role for rival South Korea in replacing its plutonium-producing facilities with safer light-water reactors.

“It is entirely dependent on the U.S. stand whether we restart the frozen nuclear program or not,” the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official news agency, KCNA.

If Washington insists on South Korean reactors, it said, the North has no intention of sticking with the October agreement, under which it promised to freeze its nuclear program, suspected of producing bomb material, in return for modern reactors.