Challenging the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of its rocket launch, North Korea said Tuesday it was withdrawing from nuclear disarmament talks and restoring its partly disabled nuclear facilities.

Nine days after North Korea fired a long-range rocket, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a statement accusing Pyongyang of violating an earlier U.N. resolution barring its ballistic missile activity.

The statement, issued in the name of the council's president on Monday (New York time), also demanded that North Korea forgo further missile launches and return to six-party denuclearization talks.

Ahead of its April 5 rocket launch, North Korea warned that any U.N. action against it _ or even an attempt to consider one _ would rupture the six-party talks that also involve South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

"Now that the six-party talks have turned into a platform for infringing upon the sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea)... the DPRK will never participate in the talks any longer nor it will be bound to any agreement of the six-party talks," the country's foreign ministry was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.

Pyongyang insists that the rocket launch successfully orbited a satellite, a claim refuted by outside monitors who say they have not detected any new object in space.

The North's ministry said, "Throughout history the UNSC has never taken issue with satellite launches."

In the Korean version of the statement, the ministry noted that Pyongyang has followed international rules governing satellite launch procedures, joining space treaties and giving notice to U.N. agencies of its launch date, orbiting coordinates and dangerous areas.

Still, the U.N. took up the "brigandish" logic of the U.S. and Japan, the ministry said.