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SEOUL : UN atomic agency inspectors will likely return to North Korea on Saturday to monitor the shutdown of its reactor, the agency's chief said, as long-stalled nuclear disarmament efforts gathered pace.
"I think they will travel on the 14th so hopefully they will arrive there on the 14th," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters Wednesday on his arrival in South Korea for a conference.
The inspectors will be back for the first time since the communist state expelled them in 2002 and restarted the Yongbyon reactor, which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium.
Last October the North tested its first atomic weapon.
After talks with President Roh Moo-Hyun, ElBaradei expressed hope that Pyongyang would scrap its atomic weapons programme and return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it quit in 2003.
"Now is a very crucial time for the IAEA, Korea and the entire world. North Korea has just returned to a verification process," ElBaradei said.
"I wish it would lead to North Korea's return to the NPT and complete scrapping of its nuclear weapons programme."
The two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, who have been meeting since 2003 to negotiate an end to the North's nuclear programmes, reached a deal in February.
Under the pact the energy-starved North will receive one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees, if it declares and dismantles all nuclear programmes.
Yongbyon's closure, to be rewarded with an initial 50,000 tons of oil from South Korea, was to be the first step. But progress was blocked by a financial dispute between the US and North Korea, which has now been resolved.
The pact calls for talks on establishing permanent peace on the peninsula, where the 1950-53 war ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty.
The US ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying Washington is prepared to begin negotiations before the end of this year on a permanent peace if the North take steps towards complete denuclearisation.
However, he warned it would not settle for a partial solution that would leave North Korea "with even a small number of nuclear weapons."
The shutdown of Yongbyon would show the North takes its commitments seriously, Vershbow said in a lecture, adding this would also mean it should no longer produce "750 grammes of plutonium" each month.
Last week the North said that to get negotiations moving it was considering closing Yongbyon as soon as the first oil shipment arrives. That 6,200-ton consignment was being loaded Wednesday and is expected to reach the North around Saturday.
"The arrival of the first shipment of heavy oil in the North, the visit by an IAEA delegation to the North and the shutdown and sealing (of the reactor) will take place about the same time," South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon told reporters.
The six nations will meet again next week, probably from Wednesday. US chief negotiator Christopher Hill is to travel to Japan and South Korea before then to coordinate positions.
Song said next week's talks would cover the second stage of the February pact -- the listing of all nuclear programmes, the disablement of nuclear facilities, the provision of the remaining fuel and normalisation of ties.
Late Wednesday, Song spoke with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, who travelled to North Korea last week for a meeting with leader Kim Jong-Il, ahead of the expected resumption of the six-party talks, Yang's ministry said.
Song said in Seoul that the February deal requires the North to dismantle all its programmes, whether plutonium-based or uranium-based.
US accusations in 2002 that the North was running a secret highly enriched uranium (HEU) programme led to the collapse of a 1994 pact with Washington which had shut down Yongbyon.
Compensatory fuel shipments under that deal were delayed following the US claims. The North, which denied operating a HEU programme, unsealed Yongbyon after an eight-year shutdown.
- AFP /ls
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