A 1-meter resolution close-up satellite image of the southern area of the Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea

PYONGYANG, December 13 (Islam Online & News Agencies) - North Korea brushed aside international warnings Friday, December 13, and forged ahead with a plan to revive a frozen nuclear program, accusing Washington of piracy over the seizure of a missile shipment.

Ratcheting up tensions a notch, North Korea told inspectors from the international nuclear watchdog to remove cameras and seals that have kept its plutonium producing nuclear facilities mothballed for eight years, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

The demand in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) served to underline the North's determination to abandon an arms pact that helped guarantee security in the region since 1994.

The North Korean announcement was the latest development in a two month nuclear confrontation and was coupled with a Pyongyang protest over the seizure of a ship earlier this week off the Arabian peninsula.

The ship and its cargo of 15 Scud missiles were seized and then released after Yemen said the shipment was destined for its military.

"This is an unpardonable piracy that wantonly encroached upon the sovereignty of the DPRK [North Korea]," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"The United States should apologize for its high-handed piracy committed against the DPRK's trading ship and duly compensate for all the mental and material damage done to the ship and its crew," he said.

He also said it was "something very regretful and disappointing" that Spain, which has normal relations with North Korea, "blindly acted a servant of the U.S. pirate."

The United States captured "the DPRK trading cargo ship Sosan" by mobilizing Spanish warships and warplanes when the vessel was sailing in the open seas off Yemen Tuesday, he said.

"It will have to be wholly responsible for all the consequences to be entailed by its ever more reckless moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and stepped-up hostile policy towards it," the North's spokesman said.

The announcement to revive its frozen nuclear program, however, was seen by U.S. officials in Seoul as a desperate bid from a bankrupt nation in the grip of a serious energy and food crisis to bring the United States to the negotiating table.

But Washington branded the move "regrettable" and warned that Pyongyang's gambit would fail. 

Washington, which has described North Korea as the world's worst proliferator of missiles and a member of a so-called "axis of evil," is clearly not going to play ball, said an expert at the Unification Ministry which handles North Korean affairs in Seoul.

"Basically, North Korea wants to renegotiate its whole relationship with Washington and is using the nuclear issue to force the United States to engage. Washington won't budge on that," he said.

"What is certain is that this crisis is not going to end any time soon."

The confrontation stems from U.S. revelations in October that North Korea admitted to running a nuclear program based on enriched uranium, in breach of the 1994 Agreed Framework accord with Washington.

Thursday's statement relates to a mothballed plutonium producing program that was frozen under the 1994 accord, under which some 8,000 spent fuel rods from a five-megawatt experimental reactor were sealed in metal casings in cooling ponds at Yongbyon, North of Pyongyang, where two large reactors were under construction.

In exchange for freezing the program, the U.S. pledged to supply 500,000 tons of fuel oil and to form a consortium to build two light-water reactors which are under construction on North Korea's east coast.

But supplies of oil were halted last month in a U.S.-led response to fears that North Korea was running a new nuclear program based on enriched uranium.

Energy-starved North Korea says that decision to cut off fuel supplies forced it to reopen its nuclear program. 

The suspended fuel shipments represent some 20 percent of North Korea's power generating capacity in a country chronically short of electricity for its factories, hospitals and homes.

North Korea has been in crisis since the mid-90s when aid agencies say some two million people died of starvation and left the country dependent on international aid for its survival.

In a related development, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage expressed optimism Friday that North Korea could be persuaded through diplomacy to scrap its nuclear program despite new threats to reactivate frozen facilities.

Armitage, wrapping up a flying visit to the Asia-Pacific region in Sydney, said that the threat emerging from North Korea was a serious one and had been for some time.

However, he told a news conference that the United States believed the situation on the Korean peninsula, which he said had been relatively stable for 50 years, could be resolved through diplomacy.

"We believe that the situation on the Korean peninsula lends itself to the possibility of a diplomatic solution given that the nations in the immediate area, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea, all share absolutely the same view that the peninsula must be denuclearized," he said.

"That is a pretty good basis to attempt to move forward diplomatically and that is what we are trying to do."

Armitage, who spent the previous four days visiting China, Japan and South Korea, met Australian Prime Minister John Howard for talks dominated by North Korea, weapons inspections in Iraq and the global war on terrorism.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Defense Minister Robert Hill also took part in the talks in which both sides agreed no commitment had been sought or given about Australian participation in any U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Armitage said the United States simply wanted Australia to "act in a national interest," and Washington's aim was to keep the Australian government apprised of its views and plans.

Asked about the intercepted North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles en route for Yemen, he said the message of the interception was "a sound and severe one" for North Korea.

He also described as "absurd" a statement by North Korea that the interception of this ship was an act of piracy.

He said it was "an unflagged stateless ship carrying contraband cargo," with its documentation in disorder and the Spanish navy ship that intercepted it had every right to stop and search it.

It was no secret North Korea was a major proliferator and the United States had indicated a very strong possibility that it may already have a nuclear weapon, he added.

"The nuclear threat has been developing there for some time," he said amid reports that Pyongyang is poised to reactivate its nuclear power plants frozen in a 1994 agreement with the United States.