North Korea starts disabling nuclear facilities
North Korea, North Korea on Monday started an unprecedented disabling
of its nuclear programme under the supervision of a US team of experts,
US officials said.
The nine experts had begun work on plutonium production facilities at
the Yongbyon complex in North Korea, said Tom Casey, a State Department
spokesman speaking in Washington.
The team led by Sung Kim, the head of the department's Korea desk,
"had in fact arrived at Yongbyon and they are beginning their activities
there in terms of starting with the first aspect of disablement of the
facility," Casey told reporters.
"Yes, the process has started," he said. "Obviously it is going to be
a process that is going to take some time."
The North, which staged its first nuclear test in October 2006, has
agreed with five negotiating partners to declare and disable all its
programmes by year-end in return for energy aid and major diplomatic
benefits. In July it took the first step by shutting down its reactor at
Yongbyon.
Disablement aims to make the reactor and other plants unusable for at
least a year while talks on total denuclearisation continue. The North
will receive energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars in return
for disablement.
If it goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its
plutonium stockpile and nuclear weapons, it can expect normalised
relations with Washington and a peace pact to replace the armistice
which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The aim of disablement is to avoid a re-run of what happened in 2002,
when a 1994 denuclearisation pact with the United States fell apart.
Despite an eight-year shutdown the North quickly resumed production
of plutonium and now has an estimated 45-65 kilogrammes (99-143 pounds)
- enough to build several bombs.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting diplomatic sources, said
chief nuclear negotiators from the six nations - the two Koreas, the
United States, China, Japan and Russia - recently agreed 11 disablement
measures at the three major plants at Yongbyon. It said these include
the withdrawal of about 8,000 spent fuel rods from the five-megawatt
reactor, the only one in operation in the country.
Yonhap said the removal of the rods, which weigh some 50 tonnes in
total, was expected to take at least six weeks. The US team was expected
to keep them in a cooling pond until a decision is made on how to
dispose of them.
A six-nation pact reached in February also envisages the North's
eventual removal from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and from
the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Seoul, Tuesday, AFP |