With additional reporting by Khaled Mamdouh, IOL Staff

SEOUL, February 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – While U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Wednesday, February 5, started his much-anticipated report on Iraq to the U.N. Security Council, North Korea indicated that it had reactivated its nuclear facilities for the production of electricity.

“The DPRK is now putting the operation of its nuclear facilities for the production of electricity on a normal footing after their restart,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a report on the official Korean Central News Agency, published almost minutes before “Powell’s show” started.

“The DPRK government has already solemnly declared that its nuclear activity would be limited to the peaceful purposes including the production of electricity at the present stage,” he said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“However, the U.S. is trying hard to paint the DPRK’s nuclear activity as one of different nature, prompted by a sinister political intention to invent a pretext for bringing its issue to the U.N. and internationalize it.”

However, the United States and nuclear experts say the Yongbyon nuclear reactor is too small to generate meaningful amounts of electricity, according to the BBC’s online news service.

They fear that North Korea’s real purpose is to produce weapons grade plutonium as part of a high-risk strategy to persuade the U.S. to sign a non-aggression pact.

Political observers believe North Korea “wanted to send a message to the Americans by choosing this timing”. The Stalinist state knows for sure that Powell’s report on Iraq – whether it carries any incriminating evidence against Baghdad or not – is seen by Washington as the final step before invading Iraq.

According to observers, by declaring the reactivation of its nuclear facilities now, Pyongyang is either forcing the U.S. to sign a non-aggression pact or – if not – North Korea will sure acquire a nuclear weapon; the only deterrent that can stop America from attacking it once Iraq is done with.

Energy-starved North Korea has already said it needed to re-start nuclear activities to make up for a shortfall in energy supplies after a Washington-led coalition cut off fuel shipments late last year.

The shipments were suspended after Washington said in October that Pyongyang admitted running a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement.

Under the agreement, the United States provided fuel aid while North Korea halted its nuclear program.

After the fuel shipments were suspended, North Korea resumed activity at Yongbyon, a long-mothballed facility capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

North Korea has withdrawn from the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT).

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is to meet February 12 to consider asking the U.N. Security Council to act against North Korea for violating nuclear non-proliferation agreements.

The Security Council could impose sanctions on North Korea as punishment for its nuclear program, though the North has said such a move would amount to “an act of war”.

Threats to Not Recognize U.N. Security Council

In a further defiance, North Korea warned it would no longer recognize the U.N. Security Council should it not take the United States to task for its “wrong Korean policy.”

“If the U.N. Security Council responsible for the issue of world peace and security does not call the U.S. wrong Korean policy to task, this organisation will turn out to be partial and the DPRK (North Korea) will, accordingly, not recognize it,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said.

“The DPRK does not care about whether the U.N. Security Council discusses the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula or not,” he said in a statement on Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“But if it wants to handle this issue, it should fairly call into question the responsibility of the U.S. which is chiefly to blame for the outbreak of this issue and for the strained situation.”

The spokesman said that the United States, by including U.N. members Iraq and Iran as well as North Korea in an “axis of evil” was slanderous and had “wantonly violated the principle and spirit of the U.N. charter.”

The United States has also breached the fundamental principle of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty “which bans nuclear threat to the non-nuclear states by listing non-nuclear countries as targets of its preemptive nuclear attacks,” he said.