Defiant North Korea kicks out inspectors

WASHINGTON — North Korea on Tuesday ordered international nuclear inspectors out of the country and said it would "never again" take part in denuclearization talks, dealing an early setback to the Obama administration's disarmament efforts.

The government took a series of steps, including an announcement that it would resume building nuclear weapons, in a strident reaction to a U.N. rebuke that had been requested by the Obama administration. The White House said North Korea had taken "a serious step in the wrong direction" but offered no guidance Tuesday on how it planned to restart the long-stalled drive to abolish North Korea's nuclear program.

However, analysts said the developments could force U.S. officials to take steps they have long avoided, such as approaching North Korea with one-on-one negotiations in order to rekindle broader negotiations involving China, Russia, Japan, the United States and North and South Korea, a process known as the six-party talks.

The North Koreans took the formal step Tuesday of giving official notice to the United Nations' nuclear-watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it wanted its inspectors to leave and disclosed plans to restart its plutonium-production facility.

"There is no need for six-party talks anymore," said a statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry.

Despite the ominous developments and the difficulty they created for President Obama's administration, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration was "quite pleased" with the U.N. Security Council's statement Monday.

U.S. officials have been urging Security Council members for more than a week to condemn the launch, which it viewed as a test of North Korea's intercontinental missile capability, and a breach of Security Council resolutions. North Korean officials contended the launch was legal and intended only to boost a communications satellite into orbit.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have said that if there was a satellite on the rocket, it did not make it to orbit, contradicting North Korean declarations that the orbiter was broadcasting patriotic music to Earth.

Initially, China and Russia resisted efforts to censure North Korea. However, U.S., Japanese and other diplomats succeeded Monday in persuading the 15 Security Council members to agree to a compromise in the form of a nonbinding statement that chastised North Korea for violating U.N. resolutions.

Although past economic sanctions have had a limited effect on North Korea, U.S. officials said the U.N. statement was important because it demonstrated that the key players in the region — notably including China, which has the greatest leverage — were joined in a common front.

"They are further isolating themselves," a U.S. official said.