Pyongyang restores UN monitoring: Diplomats

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-14 09:33

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Monday restored access for UN monitors to its atom bomb complex following a deal with Washington to salvage a denuclearization process endangered by disputes over verification, diplomats said.

"The (International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA) inspectors can access all facilities at Yongbyon again, including the reprocessing plant," said one diplomat, referring to the site that made plutonium fuel for Pyongyang's atomic bomb program.

The diplomats were familiar with IAEA operations but were not allowed to discuss such confidential information publicly.

There was no immediate comment from the UN nuclear watchdog's headquarters in Vienna.

The DPRK had barred the inspectors from Yongbyon last Thursday in anger over Washington's refusal to remove it from a sponsors-of-terrorism blacklist in a dispute over the extent of verification measures required for denuclearization.

The US State Department announced on Saturday that it had delisted the country after Pyongyang agreed to a series of verification steps. On Sunday, the DPRK said it would resume disablement work and re-admit IAEA monitors.

A diplomat said the three inspectors' first job would be to reassess the status of Yongbyon's facilities, since Pyongyang had taken steps in recent weeks to reactivate them.

The IAEA was also likely to require details of the verification deal to smooth the task of re-establishing regular safeguards inspections in the DPRK, which walked out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) said Monday it had seen no signs of the DPRK restarting work to take apart Yongbyon, a Soviet vintage complex including a fuel fabrication facility and a 5-megawatt reactor.

Under a February 2007 disarmament deal with five powers, the DPRK was to have been removed from the US blacklist once it provided a full accounting of its nuclear programs and accepted a system to check its claims.

Washington's decision to delist the DPRK was made after Pyongyang agreed to access for experts to all declared nuclear facilities and, based on "mutual consent", undeclared sites.

As a part of the 2007 disarmament deal, the DPRK began receiving 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil, or aid of equal value such as steel, when it froze operations at Yongbyon last year and allowed in nuclear inspectors.

The ROK is likely to send 3,000 tons of held-up steel aid to the DPRK once it was clear dismantling work had resumed, Yonhap news agency quoted multiple sources as saying Monday.

Agencies