KEDO to demand USD 1.89 billion from N. Korea

An international consortium once tasked with building two power-generating nuclear reactors in North Korea will soon demand that the communist country provide USD 1.89 billion in compensation for the project's failure, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported Monday, citing a Seoul official."Ever since the project fell through in 2006, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) has sent a request to North Korea each year, demanding compensation for its breach of the agreement," the government official was quoted as saying. "North Korea gave no response, and its sudden claim for compensation is completely unacceptable. The KEDO plans to send an official reply in the coming days." The demand comes after North Korea filed its own compensation claim worth some USD 5.8 billion in September, saying it suffered heavy financial losses and other troubles from the failed project.In a 1994 deal linked to North Korea's promise to denuclearize, KEDO, which includes South Korea, Japan and the US, agreed to build two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors in the North within several years.After years of delays due to poor funding and other problems, the project fell through in 2006 after the US caught North Korea pushing a second nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium in addition to its widely known plutonium-based one.The USD 4.2 billion project was about 35 percent complete when the KEDO called it off.