The UN nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday he hoped North Korea, which expelled UN nuclear inspectors last week, would return to dialogue and that Iran would allow more thorough visits and inspections.
”There is no other solution apart from dialogue,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said of North Korea, adding that he hoped the six-party talks, joining the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, Russian and host China and which North Korea branded ”useless”, would resume.
”The only way to resolve these issues is not through flexing muscles … but to try to engage the root causes,” ElBaradei said at a conference on nuclear energy in Beijing.
”We need to find a solution before [the North Koreans] begin building again their nuclear power arsenal. The longer we have this hiatus, the worse for the international community.”
Monitors from the IAEA left North Korea on Thursday after being ordered out by Pyongyang, which has raised regional tensions by saying it will abandon atomic disarmament talks and restart the aged Yongbyon nuclear complex it had agreed to shut in an aid-for-disarmament deal.
The UN Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket on April 5, saying the action contravened a UN ban.
North Korea’s rocket launch and subsequent pulling out of six-party talks alarmed the world but are not unprecedented, seen by analysts as a cry for attention and further leveraging for concessions.
Pyongyang began taking apart the Yongbyon plant more than a year ago as a part of a deal reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. IAEA inspectors were invited to monitor the moribund plant, which includes a reprocessing plant that makes plutonium which can be used for nuclear weapons.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit North Korea on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the rocket launch and recent nuclear threats, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported diplomatic sources as saying.
And the two Koreas will have rare talks on Tuesday to discuss a joint factory park in the North, where the communist state has been holding a South Korean worker captive for about three weeks after he supposedly made derogatory comments about the North’s leaders.
ElBaradei also called on Iran to reciprocate overtures from the United States.
”The Americans took the first step. I hope the Iranians will reciprocate, and if we continue to move in the right direction then, yes, we should be able to find a solution,” he said.
The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said this month they would ask EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to invite Iran to a meeting to find ”a diplomatic solution” to the long-running dispute.
President Barack Obama has departed from his predecessor George Bush’s refusal to contemplate direct talks with Tehran as long as Iran goes ahead with uranium enrichment. But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the administration remains firm on demanding that Iran suspend enrichment.
The IAEA has also wrestled with Tehran over its nuclear ambitions, especially its efforts to enrich uranium, which can be a route to refining the fissile material for atomic weapons.
Iran says it is developing enrichment technology for peaceful energy use.
ElBaradei has also often clashed with the Bush administration over what he saw as its policy of threatening Iran, and has said he supports the fresh U.S. stance on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The relationship and prospect for talks have since been complicated by Iran’s decision to sentence an Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi on spying charges. – Reuters