WASHINGTON, 15 July 2007 — North Korea has told the United States it has shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facilities, the US State Department said yesterday as a team of UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Pyongyang.
“We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team that has arrived in” North Korea, spokesman Sean McCormack said.
North Korea said last week it would consider suspending the operation of its nuclear facilities as soon as it received the first shipment of oil from South Korea under a Feb. 13 aid-for-disarmament deal. A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tons of fuel oil arrived early yesterday at the North Korea’s northeastern port of Sonbong, the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.
McCormack said US negotiators looked forward to the next step of the Feb. 13 agreement, in which North Korea “has committed to declaring all its nuclear programs and disabling all its existing nuclear facilities.”
The announcement, made in a two-paragraph statement, came on the same day as the arrival in Pyongyang of a team from the UN nuclear watchdog agency.
The leader of the IAEA team said earlier in Beijing they would go straight to Yongbyon to begin work at the complex, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The team of 10 experts is the first to return to monitor the shutdown after a 4 1/2-year absence. IAEA Director General Mohamed El-Baradei has said it would take about a month to set up the monitoring equipment.
In his statement, McCormack said: “We, along with all our other six-party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
