An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report made available yesterday suggests that North Korea is prepared to extend wide cooperation to the IAEA in its mission to shut down Pyongyang's weapons-capable nuclear facilities.
The confidential four-page report outlines events linked to the agency's foreseen role in shutting down North Korea's plutonium producing Yongbyon facility, up to last week's visit by a high-ranking agency delegation. And it documents North Korea's stated willingness to provide agency experts with needed technical information, access and other help needed for IAEA experts to do the job.
The report will be discussed by the agency's 35-nation board which is expected to approve it as early as Monday, paving the way for the beginning of the IAEA mission overseeing the shutdown and eventual dismantling of the Yongbyon facility. That would effectively start the process of ending the North's nuclear program, which -- if carried through -- would eliminate it as a nuclear weapons threat.
According to the report, North Korea agreed to the following steps:
To give agency experts a list of nuclear facilities that are shut down and sealed and updating the list as needed.
To provide agency personnel ``access to all facilities that have been shut down and/or sealed ...''
To allow the installation of ``appropriate containment and surveillance ... and other devices ...'' and other verification methods.
To allow agency experts to ``apply safeguards'' to make sure that they have full access to North Korea's nuclear program, despite the fact the country insists it is no longer bound by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
These and other points listed in the report "reflect wide-ranging willingness" by North Korea to fulfill its commitments made in February to shut down the Yongbyon facility, said a diplomat accredited to the Vienna-based agency and familiar with its involvement in the North Korean nuclear file.
The report was the work of IAEA deputy director general Olli Heinonen, and based on his tour last week of the Yongbyon facility.
North Korea had pledged in February to shut down and disable the 5-megawatt reactor, capable of producing enough plutonium to produce one nuclear bomb a year, in exchange for economic aid and political concessions. That landmark agreement was the result of talks between Pyongyang and the US, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan.
But Pyongyang refused for months to act on the promise until it received about US$25 million in funds that were frozen in a Macau bank amid a dispute with the US over alleged money-laundering.
The UN visit was the nuclear watchdog's first trip to the Yongbyon reactor since inspectors were expelled from the country in late 2002. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had traveled to North Korea in March but had not visited the facility.
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