The United States Friday welcomed the demolition of North Korea's reactor cooling tower as "a good step" toward the communist country's eventual dismantlement of nuclear programs.
However, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe cautioned that "There is still much to be done," Yonhap News reported. "This is what action for action is about."
Earlier, North Korea blew up its cooling tower at the main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. Sung Kim, the head of the U.S. State Department's Korea desk, and scores of journalists from South Korea, the U.S. China, Japan and Russia _ members of the six-party nuclear talks _ watched the explosion.
The symbolic demolition took place one day after North Korea submitted a list of its nuclear programs to China, the host of the six-party negotiations, and U.S. President George W. Bush lifted some sanctions and began the process to remove the North from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
North Korea was supposed to submit the declaration by the end of 2007, but missed the deadline as it refused to address questions on its alleged uranium-based nuclear program, nuclear proliferation to Syria and nuclear warheads. The North detonated its first nuclear device in October in 2006.