North Korea has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) it wants the nuclear monitoring body to unseal and remove surveillance cameras from a nuclear plant at the center of a suspected 1990s weapons program, Kyodo news agency reported on Friday. The report, from Vienna, quoted IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei as saying the agency had received a letter from the communist state making the demand.

Pyongyang said on Thursday that it would reactivate the nuclear facility, raising the stakes in a standoff at the world's last Cold War flashpoint.

The decision to restart the reactor, mothballed in 1994 after an international crisis over alleged production of weapons-grade plutonium there, escalates a showdown with the United States over a second nuclear program being pursued by the isolated and poor communist state.

Analysts have said Pyongyang's latest move -- which it said it had been forced to take after a U.S.-led decision to suspend oil aid to the country -- appeared to be a desperate attempt to force Washington to the negotiating table.

U.N. atomic agency urges North Korea not to restart nuclear programs

The head of the U.N. nuclear agency has meanwhile urged North Korea not to restart the nuclear power plant that Washington suspects was used to develop atomic arms before it was mothballed eight years ago.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned late Thursday that any unilateral move by the North Koreans to remove agency seals and monitoring cameras at its nuclear facilities would contravene agreements between Pyongyang and the United NationsIn a statement from Vienna, Elbaradei called on Pyongyang to act with restraint and refrain from any unilateral action that might make it hard for the monitoring agency to keep tabs on those nuclear materials subject to international safeguards.

"It is essential that the containment and surveillance measures which are currently in place continue to be maintained," ElBaradei said in the statement.

ElBaradei said he was responding to a letter from Ri Je Son, director general of North Korea's atomic energy department, announcing an end to the "freeze" on its nuclear facilities. North Korea had earlier announced it would immediately reactivate the Soviet-built reactors.

PHOTO CAPTION

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said on December 12, 2002 it would immediately end a freeze on its Yongbyon nuclear power plant, shown in May 1992, in response to an allied decision to suspend oil aid to Pyongyang, Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported. The nuclear reactor, suspected of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, was frozen in 1994 under the Agreed Framework with the United States. (IAEA via Reuters)