posted by Bina | Monday, July 16, 2007
UN inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down the nuclear reactor at the heart of its atomic weapons programme, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.
”The reactor has been shut down,” IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Bangkok, according to Reuters. ”We have verified the shutdown of the reactor.”
The next step would be to verify that other North Korean nuclear facilities had been shuttered, he said. ”After tomorrow, we will be able to report, hopefully, that all of the five facilities have been shut down.”
North Korea confirmed on Sunday it had shut down the reactor, taking a big step towards implementing a February agreement aimed at dismantling its nuclear facilities.
Closure of the Yongbyon reactor was critical to progress because the facility produced the plutonium used in last year’s nuclear test. United Nations inspectors arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday and are expected to verify the shutdown this week.
The White House said North Korea appeared to be telling the truth, an assessment shared by China and South Korea. Stephen Hadley, US national security adviser, told Fox News: “It appears that the facility is shut down and we are finally implementing the February 13 agreement. It means they will no longer be able to produce the plutonium for those nuclear weapons made out of plutonium.”
The breakthrough came hours after North Korea received its first delivery of heavy fuel oil from South Korea as part of the deal between the US, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Pyongyang was offered 50,000 tonnes of oil as an incentive to shut Yongbyon down.
The parties to the deal are scheduled to meet in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss the next steps towards dismantling the North Korean nuclear facilities and normalising ties with the US.
Yongbyon was supposed to be mothballed within 60 days of the February agreement but the shutdown was delayed by wrangling over the release of $25m of North Korean funds frozen in a Macao bank. The dispute ended last month when Russia agreed to help transfer the funds to Pyongyang.
In a statement carried by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang was quoted as saying: “We have shut down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon after we received the first shipment of heavy oil.”
North Korea said it had fulfilled its promises and warned that the complete implementation of the February deal depended on how the other five parties responded, especially what steps the US and Japan took to end their hostile policies against the isolated state.
Kim Myong-gil, a North Korean diplomat at the UN, told the Associated Press that Pyongyang was ready to start disabling its nuclear programmes as long as Washington lifted all sanctions against it, raising hope for further progress on disarmament.
South Korea said the closure of Yongbyon represented “encouraging progress” in efforts to resolve the nuclear problems.
“North Korea’s moves to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facilities and the return of the IAEA verification team have a significant meaning in that they were the first step to put denuclearisation pledges into action,” the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement.
But Christopher Hill, the senior US negotiator at the six-party talks said in Tokyo that Pyongyang had simply taken the “first step” in implementing the accord.
“I would caution everyone to understand that this is the first step, it’s only meaningful in so far as we take additional steps,” Mr Hill said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. Obviously we are very pleased by this step, but we realise how long it took to get here so I think we have to really work very hard for the additional steps that are very necessary.”
Experts say that negotiating the next phase, which calls for Pyongyang to disclose all of its nuclear weapons programmes facilities and disable them in return for progressively more fuel oil – would be more difficult.
Source : www.ft.com
”The reactor has been shut down,” IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Bangkok, according to Reuters. ”We have verified the shutdown of the reactor.”
The next step would be to verify that other North Korean nuclear facilities had been shuttered, he said. ”After tomorrow, we will be able to report, hopefully, that all of the five facilities have been shut down.”
North Korea confirmed on Sunday it had shut down the reactor, taking a big step towards implementing a February agreement aimed at dismantling its nuclear facilities.
Closure of the Yongbyon reactor was critical to progress because the facility produced the plutonium used in last year’s nuclear test. United Nations inspectors arrived in Pyongyang on Saturday and are expected to verify the shutdown this week.
The White House said North Korea appeared to be telling the truth, an assessment shared by China and South Korea. Stephen Hadley, US national security adviser, told Fox News: “It appears that the facility is shut down and we are finally implementing the February 13 agreement. It means they will no longer be able to produce the plutonium for those nuclear weapons made out of plutonium.”
The breakthrough came hours after North Korea received its first delivery of heavy fuel oil from South Korea as part of the deal between the US, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Pyongyang was offered 50,000 tonnes of oil as an incentive to shut Yongbyon down.
The parties to the deal are scheduled to meet in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss the next steps towards dismantling the North Korean nuclear facilities and normalising ties with the US.
Yongbyon was supposed to be mothballed within 60 days of the February agreement but the shutdown was delayed by wrangling over the release of $25m of North Korean funds frozen in a Macao bank. The dispute ended last month when Russia agreed to help transfer the funds to Pyongyang.
In a statement carried by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang was quoted as saying: “We have shut down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon after we received the first shipment of heavy oil.”
North Korea said it had fulfilled its promises and warned that the complete implementation of the February deal depended on how the other five parties responded, especially what steps the US and Japan took to end their hostile policies against the isolated state.
Kim Myong-gil, a North Korean diplomat at the UN, told the Associated Press that Pyongyang was ready to start disabling its nuclear programmes as long as Washington lifted all sanctions against it, raising hope for further progress on disarmament.
South Korea said the closure of Yongbyon represented “encouraging progress” in efforts to resolve the nuclear problems.
“North Korea’s moves to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facilities and the return of the IAEA verification team have a significant meaning in that they were the first step to put denuclearisation pledges into action,” the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement.
But Christopher Hill, the senior US negotiator at the six-party talks said in Tokyo that Pyongyang had simply taken the “first step” in implementing the accord.
“I would caution everyone to understand that this is the first step, it’s only meaningful in so far as we take additional steps,” Mr Hill said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. Obviously we are very pleased by this step, but we realise how long it took to get here so I think we have to really work very hard for the additional steps that are very necessary.”
Experts say that negotiating the next phase, which calls for Pyongyang to disclose all of its nuclear weapons programmes facilities and disable them in return for progressively more fuel oil – would be more difficult.
Source : www.ft.com
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