BEIJING/KUALA LUMPUR, 19 July 2007 — Envoys in Beijing yesterday worked toward a deal to press North Korea to disable nuclear facilities by the end of the year, while the UN atomic watchdog confirmed a key atomic complex was now locked.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korea had now shut five main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. As well as a reactor already confirmed shut on the weekend, they included an atomic fuel reprocessing plant that can extract the plutonium that Pyongyang used for its first nuclear test-blast last year. “Yes, we now verify that all the five nuclear facilities have been shut down,” Mohamed El-Baradei, the IAEA chief, told reporters in the Malaysian capital. Staff from IAEA arrived in North Korea on the weekend to verify and monitor the closures.
In Beijing, six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were focused on the next disarmament steps — permanently crippling the nuclear facilities and getting a full catalog of North’s all atomic activities.
Those talks have brought together North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia since 2003, and concrete progress long eluded them.
But in February, North Korea agreed to close Yongbyon in return for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, which began moving there from South Korea last week.
Under “phase two” of that agreement, the North will get 950,000 more tons of oil in return for “disabling” its atomic facilities and coming clean on its nuclear secrets.
