North Korea planned to resume dismantling its nuclear program yesterday for the first time in two months, days after the US removed the communist regime from a terrorism blacklist as a reward under a disarmament pact.
Pyongyang has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would restart work to disable the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and allow international inspectors to resume their activity, according to a restricted IAEA document to the agency’s 35 board members obtained by The Associated Press.
Separately, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said agency inspectors “will also now be permitted to reapply the containment and surveillance measures at the reprocessing facility.”
That meant agency seals taken off the plant and monitoring cameras recently removed at the North’s orders would be restored.
Two months ago on Tuesday, North Korea stopped disabling Yongbyon in anger over US demands that Pyongyang accept a plan to verify its accounting of nuclear programs as a condition for removal from a blacklist of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism.
Up to late last week, the North had threatened to reactivate the plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon.
But the North and the US found a compromise on the verification row following a trip to Pyongyang by chief US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill and Washington announced on Saturday its removal of the North from the terror list.
In delisting North Korea on Saturday, Washington said Pyongyang had agreed to all its nuclear inspection demands.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the resolution of the dispute. His spokeswoman, Michelle Montas, said Ban considered it “another step towards a verifiable non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.”
China also hailed the progress and pledged to move the denuclearization process forward as host of the nuclear disarmament talks that also involve Japan, the two Koreas, the US and Russia.
“Promoting the six-party talks process serves the common interests of the involved parties,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said in a statement issued late on Monday.
“China appreciates the constructive efforts made by the concerned parties.”
North Korea alarmed the world in 2006 by setting off a test nuclear blast. It then agreed to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid and other concessions.
The regime began disabling Yongbyon in November and blew up a cooling tower in June in a dramatic display of its determination to carry out the process. Just steps away from completing the second phase of the three-part process, Pyongyang abruptly reversed course and stopped disabling the plant, until this week.
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