The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Tuesday it will withdraw from the six-party talks and restore the nuclear facilities that have been under disablement process.

The DPRK will not fulfill any agreement reached in the nuclear talks any more, a spokesman from the DPRK foreign ministry said in a statement, in response to a UN Security Council presidential statement on its rocket launch.

He said that the DPRK will bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defence purpose.

He also said that the DPRK will begin to restore the nuclear facilities that have been under disablement process, in a bid to operate those facilities normally again.

The DPRK will restart the reprocessing of the spent fuel rods, he added.

The new move was an obvious response to the presidential statement adopted by UN Security Council on DPRK's recent rocket launch, saying it was "in contravention of Security Council resolution 1718" and demanding the country "not conduct any further launch".

The six-party talks, a platform designed to engage the DPRK, South Korea, the United States, Russia, Japan and China in talks on the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, was first held in Beijing in August, 2003, and has made tangible progress on the issue in the following years.

The DPRK destroyed the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear complex June last year, marking a symbolic step forward towards the goal.

The DPRK warned last month that any action of the United Nations against its "satellite launch" would ruin the six-party talks.

Shortly after Pyongyang's declaration, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it could "only regret" Pyongyang's decision to quit the six-party talks.

"This decision will obviously not help achieve the goals we set to ourselves in the settlement of problems of the Korean Peninsula," according to the ministry's information and press department.

"We can only express our regret at the decision of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and urge it not to halt six-party talks on the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula," a foreign ministry official said.

South Korea said Tuesday that it will deal calmly with the DPRK's stronger-than-expected response.

The South Korean government will "take a calm manner" in dealing with the DPRK's "threats", a South Korean foreign ministry official was quoted.

(Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2009)