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The North's Foreign Ministry also threatened to restore the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor the country shut down a year ago under the aid-for-disarmament deal reached on Feb. 13 last year.
"The DPRK (North Korea) decided to immediately suspend the disablement of its nuclear facilities," the ministry said in a statement. "This step took effect on Aug. 14 and the parties concerned have already been notified of this," said the statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
"Secondly, we will consider restoring the Yongbyon facilities to their original state in accordance with strong demands from our relevant agencies," it said, apparently referring to the country’s hawkish military.
The North said the measures are "countermeasures in a situation where the United States violated the agreement," referring to Washington’s failure to take Pyongyang off its terrorism blacklist. A "grave obstacle" to the settlement of the nuclear issue has been created as the United States refused to carry out its part of the agreement, the ministry statement said.
The United States promised to remove Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if the North submitted an accounting of its nuclear activities, part of multinational efforts to get the communist country to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
After the North presented the long-awaited list on June 26, U.S. President George W. Bush gave Congress a 45-day period to review his decision to de-list the North. Aug. 11 was the earliest possible date that Washington could remove the North from the list under a U.S. law.
But the Bush administration has delayed its action on removing Pyongyang from the terrorism blacklist, saying the North has yet to agree on a comprehensive verification protocol for its nuclear weapons programs.
Washington has recently stepped up pressure, urging the North to improve its human rights conditions, an indication that the United States would place a better human rights record in the country as a condition to the removal from the blacklist and normalization of diplomatic ties between Pyongyang and Washington.
Bush has also made clear that a verification mechanism should cover not only Pyongyang's plutonium program but also its uranium enrichment program and proliferation activities. Washington also wants site inspections to verify the North's account of its nuclear activities.
The North's Tuesday statement is seen as a rejection of the U.S. plan to verify the North's declaration of its nuclear activities.
"The United States is gravely mistaken if it thinks it can make a house search in the DPRK as it pleases just as it did in Iraq," the statement said, dubbing the demand as "brigandish."
The statement also reiterated Pyongyang's long-held demand for a nuclear inspection in South Korea, which houses some 28,500 American troops stationed to deter the North.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the North's move and urged the communist country to resume the disablement process.
"The measure is regrettable as it came at a time when the six parties have to make concerted efforts to complete the second phase of the denuclearization process," the ministry said in a statement.
But a senior government official downplayed the North's statement as part of its long-standing tactic of ratcheting up tensions to win concessions from dialogue partners.
"As a year has passed since the North sealed the Yongbyon reactor, it would be difficult to restore the facilities and produce plutonium," the official said. The North has completed eight out of eleven measures for disabling nuclear facilities in Yongbyon and was discharging spent nuclear fuel rods and removing unused fuel rods.
Last June, North Korea toppled the cooling tower at the Yongbyon complex in a symbolic move to show its commitment to the nuclear deal with South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, and the United States.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University, said the North would not break the six-party negotiation framework, seeking only to raise tensions to urge the United States to remove it from the terrorism blacklist.
"North Korea is expected to stall the denuclearization process to avoid negotiating with the lame duck U.S. leader, waiting for the next administration in Washington," said Kim Kun-shik, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul.
