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Yongbyon set to start disabling

"The aim of disablement is to avoid a rerun of what happened in 2002, when a 1994 denuclearization pact with the US fell apart. Despite an eight-year shutdown, the North quickly resumed production of plutonium and now has an estimated 45-65kg -- enough to build several bombs.."

North Korea was expected yesterday to begin an unprecedented disabling of the nuclear program it has pursued for half a century, under the supervision of a US team of experts.

The state's official media gave no information on whether work had started at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.

But US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said over the weekend that a US supervisory team was set to begin work yesterday.

"This will be, I think, an important moment when it's done," Hill said on Saturday in Tokyo.

The North, which staged its first nuclear test last October, has agreed with five negotiating partners to declare and disable all its nuclear programs by the end of the year in return for energy aid and several major diplomatic benefits.

In July it took the first step by shutting down the plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.

Disablement aims to make the reactor and other nuclear plants unusable for at least a year while talks on a total denuclearization of the nation to continue.

According to agreements made at the negotiations, the North will receive energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars in return for disablement.

NORMALIZED RELATIONS

If it goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its plutonium stockpile and nuclear weapons, it can expect normalized relations with Washington and a peace pact to replace the armistice which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The aim of disablement is to avoid a rerun of what happened in 2002, when a 1994 denuclearization pact with the US fell apart. Despite an eight-year shutdown, North Korea quickly resumed production of plutonium and now has an estimated 45-65kg -- enough to build several bombs.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting diplomatic sources, said chief nuclear negotiators from the six nations -- the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia -- recently agreed on 11 disablement measures at the three major plants at Yongbyon.

It said these include the withdrawal of about 8,000 spent fuel rods from the five-megawatt reactor, the only one in operation in the country.

Yonhap said the removal of the rods, which weigh some 50 tonnes in total, was expected to take at least six weeks. The US team was expected to keep them in a cooling pond until a decision could be made on how to dispose of them.

A six-nation pact reached in February also envisages the North's eventual removal from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and from the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act.

But Hill said on Saturday that Pyongyang would first have to satisfy Washington that it was not engaged in any terrorism-related activities.

"They have to address the terrorism concerns that put them on the list in the first place," he said.

North Korea's quest for nuclear weapons began after the Korean War, when in 1954 Washington began stationing nuclear weapons in Japan, followed by the arrival of nuclear warheads in South Korea in January 1958.

SOVIET TRAINING

In the mid-1950s, North Korea signed a research agreement with Moscow under which hundreds of its scientists were trained in nuclear physics by the Soviets.

The North later signed a similar cooperation agreement with China.

After 33 years, the US withdrew its nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula in the early 1990s.

More recently, according to US sources, the North turned to Pakistan to develop a separate program based on highly enriched uranium.

Pyongyang has reportedly agreed to account for that program as well.
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