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WORLD / Asia-Pacific

N. Korea invites IAEA chief to visit

(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-02-24 09:33

Vienna - North Korea on Friday asked the chief UN atomic inspector to
visit four years after expelling his experts and dropping out of the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- an encouraging sign the country is
serious about dismantling its weapons program.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
offered few details about his upcoming trip, which other agency officials
said would likely occur in the second week of March.

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Still, his announcement was significant because it signaled the North's
willingness to subject its nuclear program to outside scrutiny for the
first time since withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty in January
2003, just weeks after ordering nuclear inspectors to leave.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the invitation, which came five
months after the North conducted its first nuclear weapon test, as a
"good beginning," an interpretation shared by the US administration.

"We are really very pleased that the IAEA is now receiving the initial
steps to be able to go back into North Korea to be able to verify
compliance. It is indeed a good sign that it has happened as quickly as
it has," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Ottawa, Canada.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the invitation shows North Korea
is willing to begin executing the terms of the six-nation deal reached
Feb. 13 in which the North said it would dismantle its nuclear facilities
and normalize relations with South Korea, Japan and the US in exchange
for oil shipments and security guarantees.

"We'll be interested in hearing his report when he gets back," Fratto
said.

ElBaradei's trip will mark only an initial step in the long and complex
process that the international community hopes will result in stripping
the North of its nuclear weapons capabilities and ensuring it remains
without such arms.

In a process that one UN official said "could take years," IAEA
inspectors would be tasked with re-establishing the monitoring of the
plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear facility, and then being on site
while it is closed and dismantled.

"At the same time, there has to be some kind of declaration of what North
Korea has and some way of following that up," the official said on
condition of anonymity because the information was confidential.

Little is know about the North's nuclear program, leaving the outside
world to rely mostly on North Korean claims since IAEA inspectors left in
December 2002.

Conservatives in Washington have berated the Bush administration for
caving in on its previous tough stance against the North. The US agreed
to resolve financial restrictions it placed on a Macao bank, accused of
complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering by North Korea, to pave
the way for the disarmament-for-aid deal.

On Friday during a visit to Australia, US Vice President Dick Cheney
expressed caution about the agreement, but called it a "first hopeful
step."

"We go into this deal with our eyes open," Cheney said. "In light of
North Korea's missile test last July, its nuclear test in October and its
record of proliferation and human rights abuses, the regime in Pyongyang
has much to prove."

The Feb. 13 agreement signed by the two Koreas, the United States, Japan,
China and Russia specifies only that IAEA inspectors should be tasked
with supervising the closing of the Yongbyon reactor. But former UN
nuclear inspector David Albright, who last month visited North Korea,
said officials there told him they wanted the agency's role expanded to
"verify nuclear disarmament."

"They see the IAEA as the natural organization to verify whatever is
done," said Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and
International Security tracks the North Korean and Iranian nuclear
programs.

ElBaradei said he and North Korean authorities would meet on how to
"implement the freeze of (nuclear) facilities" and the "eventual
dismantlement of these facilities."

"I hope eventually they'll come back to be members of the IAEA," he said
of the North, which left at the same time it quit the Nonproliferation
Treaty.

Ban, who was visiting UN agencies in Vienna, said he hoped the ElBaradei
invitation would translate into concrete steps in denuclearizing the
Korean peninsula.

"I hope that he and his delegation will be able to discuss with North
Korean authorities ... methods on first freezing nuclear facilities and
including the eventual dismantlement of all nuclear weapons and
facilities," Ban said.

Expressing his disappointment about Iran's nuclear defiance, Tehran
continues to enrich uranium in violation of the UN Security Council, Ban
said: "I hope sincerely that Iranian authorities should learn from the
North Korean issue."

The Feb. 13 deal requires North Korea to first shut down and seal its
main nuclear reactor within 60 days of the agreement, accept
international monitors and begin discussions with the US on its other
nuclear facilities. In return, the nations would ship the North an
initial load of fuel oil.

If North Korea declares all its nuclear programs and begins to disable
its nuclear facilities, it would get a much larger shipment of fuel oil
and aid. The US also would begin the process of removing North Korea from
its designation as a terror-sponsoring state and ending trade sanctions.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Chinese School - N. Korea invites IAEA chief to visit

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