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Source: N. Korea moving nuclear fuel rods

A North Korean soldier stands guard this week at the site of the signing of the 1953 armistice that ended hostilities between North and South Korea.
A North Korean soldier stands guard this week at the site of the signing of the 1953 armistice that ended hostilities between North and South Korea.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Bush administration source said Friday that U.S. spy satellites have detected what apparently are trucks taking North Korea's stockpile of nuclear fuel rods out of storage.

The source -- who confirmed a report in Friday's New York Times -- said, "It's a reasonable assumption that this is what is happening."

"My concern is that the North Koreans are moving down this road," the source said, referring to the production of fissile material. "Left to their own devices they are going to proceed."

The Times article said that intelligence analysts have seen a lot of activity in January at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, with trucks arriving at the building that houses the storage pond. The U.S. spy satellites couldn't determine exactly what was being put in the trucks, however, the report said.

"Analysts concluded that it was likely that workers were transporting the rods to another site, either to get them out of sight, or to move them to a reprocessing plant to convert them into bomb-grade plutonium," the Times said.

North Korea is in the process of restarting its Yongbyon nuclear plant -- which had been suspected of being used to produce material for nuclear weapons -- an action it says was necessary because the United States stopped heavy fuel oil shipments.

North Korea announced this month it was pulling out of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which promised U.S. assistance to Pyongyang in exchange for freezing its nuclear program.

Washington said it stopped the shipments because Pyongyang admitted to having a nuclear weapons program -- a violation of the 1994 agreement -- an allegation North Korea denies.


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