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SEOUL - UN inspectors were Sunday set to verify North Korea's announcement that it has shut down a plutonium-producing reactor, in what would be the first step since 2002 towards ending its nuclear programme.
The North, which tested its first atomic bomb last October, has told the United States its Yongbyon facilities have been closed down, the State Department announced Saturday.
"We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team that has arrived in the DPRK (North Korea)," spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
US envoy Christopher Hill, who has spent two years negotiating nuclear disarmament with the hardline communist state, said in Japan that the UN inspectors would start their crucial task Sunday.
They "begin to verify today," he was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying.
The 10-strong team arrived Saturday with one tonne of monitoring equipment -- their first inspection mission since North Korea expelled the IAEA in December 2002 and re-started Yongbyon after an eight-year shutdown.
The Soviet-era reactor has produced enough plutonium to make 5-12 bombs since it began operating in 1987, according to varying estimates.
A first shipment of 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil, promised under a February six-nation pact in compensation for the shutdown, also arrived in the North Saturday from South Korea.
Hill, the US chief representative in talks also linking the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia, has cautioned that the shutdown is "just the first step" towards the goal of total nuclear disarmament.
But negotiators were still heartened. "It's good news," Seoul's chief nuclear envoy Chun Yung-Woo told AFP before a new round of six-nation negotiations Wednesday in Beijing.
"The government welcomes and regards it as encouraging progress in efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue," South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday.
"The government hopes this move will serve as a stepping stone for expediting the implementation of next steps under the February 13 agreement and further advancing the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula."
"With the six-party talks negotiators set to meet July 18 in Beijing, we look forward to working with all parties to make rapid progress in implementing the next phase," said McCormack.
The US said North Korea's mission to the United Nations told it of the shutdown.
Yongbyon's closure is the first step in the pact.
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 even though weapons are not specifically mentioned in the agreement.
Washington, which envisages diplomatic relations and a formal peace pact if the North fulfils all commitments, wants to know the status of an alleged highly enriched uranium (HEU) programme separate to the plutonium operation.
US allegations in 2002 of the secret HEU programme, denied by the North, led to the suspension of fuel oil shipments and the collapse of a deal which had kept Yongbyon shut since 1994.
"Declaration is one of the early next steps. We would expect a comprehensive list, declaration, to be in a matter of several weeks, possibly a couple of months. We see it as coming before disabling of the facilities," Hill said Saturday.
He travels on to South Korea late Sunday or Monday. - AFP/ir
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