Plan to dismantle N Korea reactor on track

EFFORTS to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme moved ahead yesterday, with the chief US envoy saying he wants the North’s reactor completely disabled by year’s end and UN inspectors heading to Pyongyang to supervise the shutdown.

Also en route to North Korea was a South Korean tanker carrying oil for the impoverished nation in return for the North’s agreement to deactivate the plutonium-producing reactor central to its nuclear weapons programme.

When they arrive in Pyongyang today, the inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be the first entering North Korea in nearly five years.

The communist nation expelled IAEA monitors in 2002, shutting its nuclear activities to outside view.

Meanwhile, North Korean military officials proposed holding direct talks with their US counterparts about forging a more permanent peace on the Korean peninsula.

The State Department, however, suggested it was both premature and outside the framework for talks already agreed upon.

North Korea tested an atomic bomb in October, but then agreed four months later to scrap its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for the concessions.

The country hinted last week that it would shut down its Yongbyon reactor after receiving an initial shipment of oil under the February deal.

“With the kind of help which we (have received) from the DPRK in the past few weeks, we think we will do our job in a successful way,” IAEA team chief Adel Tolba said, using the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The team hopes to arrange the next steps for deactivating the reactor, long a concern to other countries in the region.

US diplomat Christopher Hill said the next step would be to get a “full declaration of all North Korean nuclear facilities in a few months and the reactor disabled by the end of the year”.

Mr Hill was in Japan to prepare for next week’s talks between North Korea and the five nations that persuaded it to disarm. South Korea, the US, China, Japan and Russia planned to meet in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss their deal with the North.

“I think the talks will be very smooth,” Mr Hill said.

The South Korean tanker No 9 Han Chang sailed for North Korea from the port of Ulsan on Thursday, carrying 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil. The ship was expected to arrive early today in the North’s north-eastern port of Sonbong and would take about 48 hours to be unloaded.

North Korea has been promised a total of 50,000 tons of oil for shutting the reactor, and it will get 950,000 tons if it disables all its nuclear facilities.