A North Korean diplomat confirmed on Sunday that his country had shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor after receiving an initial shipment of oil aid and said that United Nations inspectors would start to verify the closure later in the day.
Kim Myong Gil, minister at the North’s mission to the UN in New York, also raised hope for further progress on disarmament and noted that the next steps included the North making a declaration of its nuclear programme and disabling the facilities.
But that would only come if Washington took actions ”in parallel”, including removing wider economic sanctions against Pyongyang and striking the country from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.
”Immediately after the arrival of the first heavy fuel oil, the facilities were shut down and the [International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA] personnel will verify that, maybe by now, or from today in Korea,” Kim said by telephone. ”The IAEA personnel will work as they did at the previous visit; they will work for monitoring the shutdown, the status of the facilities.”
UN nuclear inspectors were expelled from the North in late 2002 at the start of the nuclear crisis. A 10-member team arrived on Saturday in North Korea to monitor the reactor at Yongbyon, about 100km north of the capital, being switched off — the first step by the North to scale back its weapons programme since the stand-off began.
”After the shutdown, then we will discuss about the economic sanctions lifting and removing of the terrorism list. All those things should be discussed and resolved,” Kim said.
Move welcomed
North Korea also informed the United States it has shut down its nuclear reactor, the US State Department said on Saturday. ”We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the IAEA team,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said in a statement.
South Korea on Sunday praised the North’s move as ”the first step toward translating the North’s commitment to denuclearisation into action”. In a statement by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Cho Hee-yong, Seoul called on Pyongyang to ”speed up the implementation of the next phase” of its commitment to disarm.
The main US envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has said he believes the disablement of the North’s nuclear facilities could be completed by the end of the year. He said he also expects a complete declaration of its atomic programmes within months.
”The shutdown of the Yongbyon complex took place as we believed it would. But I believe we need to caution everyone that this is just the first step,” Hill told broadcaster Fuji TV on Sunday in the Japanese resort town of Hakone.
The US had been informed of the shutdown at about 1.30pm GMT on Saturday, Hill told Japanese broadcaster NHK. He added that he expects a report from the IAEA inspectors who were at Yongbyon by the end of Sunday.
After the IAEA team installs monitoring equipment, some experts will remain at Yongbyon to ensure the reactor stays shuttered.
Oil shipment
The oil that the North received on Saturday via a South Korean ship was an initial 6 200 tons of a total 50 000 tons as a reward for the reactor shutdown. Under a February agreement with the US and other regional powers, Pyongyang will receive a total equivalent of one million tons of oil for dismantling its nuclear programmes.
The deal came after years of torturous negotiations in the so-called six-party talks, which include China, Japan, Russia, the US and the two Koreas. Those talks are set to reconvene on Wednesday for the first time since March, where diplomats will hash out details of the next steps in the disarmament process.
North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted its reactor in early 2003, after Washington accused it of a secret uranium-enrichment programme in violation of an earlier disarmament deal and halted oil deliveries.
Negotiations to resolve the issue have snagged on a variety of issues, including the North’s anger over comments by US officials about its government and financial restrictions placed on a bank where North Korea held accounts.
Moves to resolve the stand-off gained momentum in the wake of North Korea’s underground test nuclear explosion in October, after which the US took steps to reverse its previous hard-line policy and accommodate North Korean demands. — Sapa-AP