SEOUL, South Korea, December 24, SPA -- North Korea has refused to dispose of unused nuclear fuel and destroy a cooling tower at its main nuclear complex until it receives benefitspromised under a disarmament deal, a South Korean newsreport said Monday. North Korea began disabling key facilities at its nuclearcomplex north of Pyongyang last month under the watch ofU.S. experts, pledging to complete the process by year'send in return for international energy aid and otherconcessions. Washington recently sent delegations to North Koreademanding that disablement measures be applied to unusednuclear fuel and a cooling tower at the plutonium-producingcomplex to make it unusable for at least one year, theChosun Ilbo newspaper, a mass circulation South Koreannewspaper, reported from Washington. The North rebuffed the U.S. demands, saying it can onlytake those steps after it has received new benefits underthe next phase of the disarmament deal, the paper said. The South Korean Foreign Ministry would not comment Monday on the report, and the U.S. Embassy in Seoul was closed, the Associated Press reported.--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/511785