North Korea threatened yesterday to re-ignite its nuclear reactor, process more plutonium for nuclear weapons and withdraw permanently from international disarmament negotiations. The furious reaction came hours after the UN Security Council had issued a statement, unanimously agreed by its 15 members, condemning the launch of a long-range rocket by North Korea ten days ago.

The UN statement fell short of a formal resolution — which was blocked by North Korea’s former communist allies, Russia and China — but called for a blacklist of North Korean companies, as was agreed in a resolution three years ago.

A statement from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, carried on the state-run Korean Central News Agency, condemned the UN decision. “We have no choice but to further strengthen our nuclear deterrent to cope with additional military threats by hostile forces,” the statement read. “We will take steps to restore disabled nuclear facilities . . . and reprocess used fuel rods that came from experimental nuclear reactors.” Pyongyang announced last night that it was expelling inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

North Korea suspended activity at its Yongbyon nuclear power plant, where it is believed to have extracted plutonium from spent fuel rods for use in the manufacture of about six nuclear warheads last summer.

Pyongyang claims that the recent rocket launch was part of its civilian space programme, with the intention of putting a communications satellite in orbit. The US believes the launch was an illicit test of intercontinental ballistic technology, designed to carry a nuclear warhead to targets as distant as the United States. As such, it would have been prohibited under the terms of a 2006 Security Council resolution.

Previous attempts to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have centred on protracted negotiations at the six-party talks, which brought together the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The suspension of activity at the Yongbyon facility came after a round of such talks in 2007, with North Korea receiving one million tonnes of oil in return.

In yesterday’s statement the North insisted that those talks were over. “There is no need for the six-party talks any more,” it said.

The strength of the reaction is in keeping with North Korea’s rhetorical style and it does not necessarily mark the end of the negotiations nor the full resumption of the nuclear programme. It does, however, indicate that the process of engagement with the North has taken a step back, after painstaking progress in the last two years of the Bush Administration.

President Obama called the Security Council statement “a clear and united message, that North Korea’s action was unlawful and would result in real consequences”. The statement said that the committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea must report within ten days on companies, equipment and technologies that should be blacklisted under the 2006 sanctions resolution, which was never enforced. The council itself will come up with a list by April 30 if the committee fails to act.

A US nuclear expert said last night that if North Korean scientists had defuelled the reactor and disengaged some of the equipment it could be months — and as long as a year — before it was back up and running as normal. The reactor could, however, be working again within a few weeks if they had done the bare minimum to demonstrate good faith.

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