* N.Korea restarts reprocessing of nuclear fuel rods * Japan urges North to return to six-party talks * U.N. committee puts 3 N.Korea firms on blacklist (Adds analyst comments, response from Seoul, Tokyo, details) By Miyoung Kim and Jon Herskovitz SEOUL, April 25 (Reuters) - North Korea has started to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods at its nuclear arms plant, its foreign ministry said on Saturday, further raising regional tensions already stoked by its defiant rocket launch this month. The announcement came hours after a U.N. Security Council committee on Friday placed three North Korean companies on a U.N. blacklist for aiding Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programmes, eliciting a sharp rebuke from a North Korean envoy. [ID:nN24458639] Reclusive North Korea has lashed out at being punished for the April 5 launch, widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test that violated U.N. resolutions, saying it would boycott six-way nuclear talks and bolster its nuclear deterrent. "The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant began as declared in the Foreign Ministry statement dated April 14," North Korea's official news agency KCNA quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. "This will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defence in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from the hostile forces," it said. South Korea's foreign ministry said it had no immediate comment on the North's announcement and Japan said it would urge Pyongyang to resume international nuclear talks. "The UN Security Council... is telling North Korea to respond to the calls for resuming the six-party talks at an early stage. Japan will also try to persuade (North Korea)," Kazuo Kodama, a spokesman at the Japanese foreign ministry, told Reuters. PRESSURING WASHINGTON North Korea, which was hit with U.N. sanctions after missile tests in July 2006 and its only nuclear test a few months later, has used its military threat for years to gain global attention and squeeze concessions out of regional powers. By making these moves early in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, it has more cards to play during his presidency and forces him to make crucial decisions about how it will manage its relations with Pyongyang, analysts said. "North Korea wants to continue provoking new crises, to demand the attention of the U.S. and others," said Zhu Feng, professor at Peking University. "The biggest issue is still North Korea provoking a crisis, and the U.S. ignoring them. That makes getting the six-party talks restarted again a difficult diplomatic issue." North Korea struck a deal with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States to disable its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant in exchange for massive aid and ending its international ostracism. It has expelled U.N. and U.S. nuclear inspectors at Yongbyon, located about 100 km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, who had been overseeing steps to put the entire plant out of operation for at least a year. Rebuilding parts of Yongbyon could increase the regional security threat because Pyongyang could add to its meagre stockpile of fissile material, increasing the likelihood that it could conduct another nuclear weapons test. Experts said it could take North Korea, which conducted its only nuclear test in October 2006, as little as three months to have the reprocessing facility up and running again. Experts said North Korea, which has enough fissile material for six to eight nuclear bombs, wants to separate plutonium from spent fuel rods cooling at the plant that could yield it enough material for at least one more nuclear bomb. North Korea has told foreign nuclear experts that it can produce domestically all the material it needs to run the reprocessing facility, such as non-corrosive metals and various chemicals. But other parts of the plant may be beyond repair, because international trade sanctions make it difficult for it to obtain components needed for its reactor and nuclear fuel fabrication facility. The North would also need to rebuild the cooling tower in order to resume the reactor's operations. North Korea blew up the tower almost a year ago in what it said was a demonstration of its commitment to the nuclear deal. For a factbox on Yongbyon, click [ID:nSEO141049] North Korea will stay away from international nuclear disarmament talks, Russia's foreign minister said on Friday after visiting Pyongyang and pressing North Korea to return to the sputtering discussions. [ID:nSP437146]. (Additional reporting by Yoko Kubota in Tokyo, and Lucy Hornby in Beijing) (Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev walks near a Topol missile launcher during a visit to cosmodrome Plesetsk in this October 12, 2008 file photo. U.S. and Russian negotiators held a "productive" initial ...
