NORTH Korea has decided against restarting its nuclear reactor and reprocessing facilities, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said yesterday.
Speaking amid raised tensions caused by the firing of a North Korean missile into the Sea of Japan, Mr Powell said the decision not to restart the facility at Yongbyon was "a wise choice if it's a conscious choice".
Work at the nuclear facility was frozen in a 1994 agreement with the United States.
But North Korea renounced the deal in October and threw out international inspectors on New Year's Eve.
That prompted concerns that it had restarted operations in an attempt to build nuclear warheads.
Mr Powell said US officials had passed word to Pyongyang that in the United States' view the "entire political landscape" of north-east Asia would be transformed if the North showed it was intent on producing nuclear weapons.
The comments came as he was flying home from Asia, where North Korea's intentions were the prime topic of meetings he conducted in China, Japan and South Korea.
North Korea launched two Chinese-made missiles on Monday and was likely to fire another missile today, according to Japanese reports.
The first launch was unsuccessful, while the second missile landed in the Sea of Japan after flying 37.5 miles.
A Japanese government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said it was awaiting details of the launch, apparently timed to upstage yesterday's inauguration of South Korea's president, Roh Moo-hyun.
"We must judge whether [the missile launch] would pose a threat after confirming North Korea's intentions and the type of the missile," he said.
But ordinary Japanese who have had to live with their unpredictable neighbour's missile capabilities for years, were rattled.
"I am worried. That country is so unpredictable. It is scary," said Keiko Tajima, 40, a company employee. "There is nothing we, the average person, can do about it, so we can only hope that our government does the right thing," she added.
However, in Washington, the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer appeared to laugh off the "bizarre" incident, joking that it was a novel way for the communist nation to mark the inauguration of South Korea's new president.
"Typically at times of inaugural festivities, most nations send flowers or bouquets or visiting dignitaries; North Korea sent a short-range cruise missile," Mr Fleischer said.
He said the missile launch fitted into a pattern in which North Korea "engages in rather bizarre actions and then expects the world to pay them or negotiate with them to give them something in exchange for stopping what they shouldn't have done in the first place.
"North Korea will not be rewarded for bad behaviour, they should not expect any types of financial inducements as a result of their actions," he said. "This is a regional issue for the nations in the region to deal with."
North Korea, which shocked the region when it launched a long-range ballistic missile over Japan in August 1998, is deadlocked with the US over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
Pyongyang demands direct talks with Washington to defuse the crisis and has escalated tensions in a series of provocative steps since December.
The crisis began in October, when US officials said North Korea had admitted pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
The North then expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and threatened to resume missile testing and abandon the 1953 Korean War armistice.
Last week, a North Korean MiG-19 fighter plane intruded into South Korean air space and the North's military threatened to walk away from the truce that ended the 1950-53 war.
Monday's missile launch did not affect yesterday's swearing in ceremony for Mr Roh. Mr Roh, a human rights lawyer untested on the global stage, laid out his vision of transforming his country into a peaceful and powerful economic hub.
"I will seek active international co-operation on the premise that South and North Korea are the two main actors in inter-Korean relations," he said in his speech calling for a peaceful resolution of tensions.
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