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South Korea and the United States withdrew their last-remaining staff from the construction site of two nuclear power reactors in North Korea on Sunday, ending a decade-old project amid rekindled tension over the North's nuclear ambitions.

Fifty-seven officials and workers, including one US representative, returned from the North's northeastern coastal town of Sinpo where a US-led international consortium had worked to build two light-water reactors for power generation, according to Seol Dong-geun, a South Korean official.

The reactors - which are a type difficult to divert for military purposes - were a reward to the North, along with free fuel oil supplies, for agreeing to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program under a 1994 deal with the United States.

The project ground to a halt after a dispute flared again between the two sides in late 2002 over Washington's allegations that North Korea had pursued a clandestine atomic bomb program in violation of the 1994 accord.

The staff's pullout came after the international consortium, called Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization or KEDO, decided in late November to terminate the moribund project. KEDO's executive members are the US, South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

Before that, the project had been on hold for two years since 2003. It was about 35 percent complete when halted.

North Korea has protested KEDO's decision to end the project and demanded unspecified compensation from the US, barring the removal of 93 pieces of heavy construction equipment and about 190 South Korean cars and some buses from the site, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north the inter-Korean border.

KEDO was formed in 1995 to oversee the US$4.6 billion (€ 3.8 billion) reactor project funded mainly by South Korea and Japan. About US$1.5 billion (€ 1.24 billion) has been spent so far.

Since 2003, the US and the North have negotiated in six-nation talks, which also involve South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, to try to resolve the renewed nuclear crisis.

In September last year, North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security assurances. But follow-up talks have stalled as the North put forward new conditions for disarming _ such as its demand for nuclear reactors for power generation - which Washington says are unacceptable.

The latest talks recessed in November. The participants agreed to meet again, but didn't set a date.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies January 9, 2006)