Inspectors 'preparing to leave North Korea'

UN nuclear inspectors in North Korea are preparing to leave, the UN nuclear agency confirmed today, denouncing the reclusive nation as “a country in defiance of its international obligations”.

Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said the agency’s three inspectors would leave by December 31.

The agency decided to withdraw its inspectors a day after North Korea threatened to expel them. The inspectors have been monitoring a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, north of the capital, Pyongyang.

“IAEA inspectors in Yongbyon are making arrangements to leave the country. This is in response to DPRK officials confirming directly to the inspectors that they should leave the country immediately,” Fleming said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

She said the IAEA was pulling the inspectors out because North Korea had decided not to respond to a letter of protest by agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei.

In a statement issued from Sri Lanka, where he is on holiday, ElBaradei said: “This is a country in defiance of its international obligations. It sets a dangerous precedent for the integrity of the non-proliferation regime.”

ElBaradei had said earlier that the North’s demand that the inspectors leave would rob the agency of its last means to ensure the country’s facilities were not being used to produce nuclear weapons. He said it worsened the crisis sparked by Pyongyang’s decision to revive its long-frozen nuclear complex.

The North removed the IAEA’s monitoring seals and surveillance cameras from the complex earlier this week and began moving in fuel rods needed to restart the 5-kilowatt reactor at Yongbyon.

The IAEA confirmed Friday that it had received a letter from the North Koreans “requesting the immediate removal of IAEA inspectors”.

ElBaradei had sent a response to North Korea’s atomic energy chief, Ri Je Son, urging the North to allow the inspectors to remain and to install new seals and cameras at the Yongbyon complex.

The IAEA has been monitoring the complex since the North closed it in 1994 under an agreement that aimed to ensure that the isolated state did not divert nuclear materials to make weapons.

The IAEA normally has two inspectors in North Korea. They are international experts, based in Vienna, and travel to North Korea for stints that last about two weeks. On Friday, three inspectors were in the country because of an overlap in a routine rotation, Fleming said.

North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, reported that the country would reactivate a reprocessing laboratory at the facility where plutonium can be extracted from spent fuel rods. Plutonium can be used to make atomic bombs.

North Korea already holds 8,000 spent fuel rods. US officials say that the spent fuel rods contain enough plutonium to make several atomic bombs.

As of Friday, about 2,000 fresh fuel rods had been moved to a storage facility in the reactor, Fleming said. That was 1,000 more rods than had been moved a day earlier. The reactor needs 8,000 rods to be restarted, the IAEA said.