WORLD / Asia-Pacific
North Korea shuts down nuclear reactor
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-07-15 08:52
North Korea has told the United States it has shut down a nuclear reactor
as part of a disarmament deal, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday
after a team of U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived in Pyongyang.
"We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and
monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency
team that has arrived" in North Korea, State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said.
A DigitalGlobe satellite image shows a nuclear facility in Yongbyon,
North Korea September 29, 2004. North Korea has told the United States it
has shut down a nuclear reactor as part of a disarmament deal, the U.S.
State Department said on Saturday after a team of U.N. nuclear inspectors
arrived in Pyongyang. [File Photo/Reuters]
North Korea said last week it would consider suspending the operation of
its nuclear facilities as soon as it received the first shipment of oil
from South Korea under a February 13 aid-for-disarmament deal.
A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tons of fuel oil arrived early on
Saturday at the North Korea's northeastern port of Sonbong, the
Unification Ministry in Seoul said.
McCormack said U.S. negotiators looked forward to the next step of the
February 13 agreement, in which North Korea "has committed to declaring
all its nuclear programs and disabling all its existing nuclear
facilities."
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.
The announcement about the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities,
made in a two-paragraph statement, came on the same day as the arrival in
Pyongyang of a team from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
The leader of the IAEA team said earlier in Beijing they would be go
straight to Yongbyon, which is north of Pyongyang, on Saturday to begin
work at the complex, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The team of 10 experts is the first to return to monitor the shutdown
after a 4 1/2-year absence.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has said it would take about a
month to set up the monitoring equipment. "I am quite optimistic that
this is a good step in the right direction," he said.
In his statement, McCormack said, "We, along with all our other six-party
partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula."
The six-party talks are scheduled to resume in Beijing on Wednesday, he
said.
The talks, at which North Korea sits down with the United States, South
Korea, China, Japan and Russia, are expected to map out the next stage of
the disarmament process.
The other five have promised massive economic aid and better diplomatic
ties if North Korea scraps its nuclear arms program.
"How smoothly the rest of the operation will go very much depends on how
progress will be made in the six-party talks," ElBaradei said. "It is
going to be a long process."
U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill, who is visiting Japan, told
Japanese media he expects North Korea will produce a list of all its
nuclear facilities in the coming weeks or months.
"We would expect the comprehensive list, declaration (of North Korea's
nuclear programs) to be in a matter of several weeks, possibly couple of
months," Hill said, according to a Kyodo report from the resort town of
Hakone.
In 2002, the United States accused North Korea of operating a covert
uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 nuclear-freeze deal. In
December 2002, the North expelled IAEA inspectors and said it would
restart its reactor.
(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, Chris Buckley and Lucy Hornby
in Beijing and Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo)
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