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SEOUL - The UN's nuclear watchdog confirmed Monday that North Korea has shut the reactor which produces bomb-making plutonium but the chief US negotiator forecast problems in persuading it to abandon all its nuclear ambitions.
"Our inspectors are there. They verified the shutting down of the reactor yesterday," International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said in Bangkok. "It's a good step in the right direction."
He told reporters inspectors had verified the shutdown at one facility in Yongbyon on Sunday, and hoped to check on another four facilities by Wednesday.
The North announced Sunday it had closed the Yongbyon complex, its first step since 2002 towards ending a programme which culminated in an atomic bomb test last October.
US envoy Christopher Hill, preparing for another meeting of the six-nation group which negotiated a February disarmament deal, also hailed "a good start" but warned of much work ahead.
"It took a long time to get these first steps and it's a reminder of how difficult other steps will be," said the assistant secretary of state in a meeting in Seoul with South Korea's Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung.
A row over US sanctions on the North's bank accounts in Macau held up progress for months. It finally agreed to move after it got its money back, and after South Korea delivered the first shipment of a total of 50,000 tons of fuel oil promised in compensation for the reactor closure.
That shipment arrived Saturday along with IAEA inspectors.
Lee was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying a second shipment of 7,500 tons was to leave later Monday.
Hill later met his South Korean counterpart Chun Yung-Woo to prepare for a new round in Beijing Wednesday of the forum grouping South and North Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.
"For once I think we can talk (in Beijing) about next steps, not the last steps," Hill told Lee. He will meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan Tuesday in Beijing.
Hill, who seeks the permanent disablement of the North's nuclear programmes by year-end, said Washington was "certainly prepared to do everything we need to do to make it happen."
But he told reporters: "I certainly have to anticipate there will be problems because I never expected it would take until July to get this first step done."
The North will receive another 950,000 tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees, if it goes on to declare all nuclear programmes and permanently disable all nuclear facilities.
The US and its partners say "facilities" must include weapons and plutonium stockpiles and the North must account for an alleged covert highly enriched uranium (HEU) programme.
"Full denuclearisation needs to be full," Hill told reporters after talks with Chun, but he expressed confidence the HEU issue would be settled.
"I think we are going to dig it out in a way to resolve it," he said.
The shutdown is the first time that Yongbyon has been closed as a political act since a previous disarmament deal collapsed in late 2002, but enough plutonium for several more bombs is thought to have been extracted since then.
Washington envisages diplomatic relations and a formal peace pact if the North fulfils all commitments. - AFP/ir
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