AUSTRIA: IAEA approves atomic shutdown mission to North Korea, says Iran slowing uranium enrichment work

The International Atomic Energy Agency's governing body approves sending experts to North Korea to supervise the shutdown of the Stalinist state's plutonium-producing reactor. And IAEA Director General ElBaradei says there are signs Iran is slowing down uranium enrichment work. The U.N. nuclear watchdogs governing body agreed on Monday(July 9) to send monitors to North Korea to verify a shutdown of its atomic bomb programme. The mission will be the first International Atomic Energy Agency mission in the reclusive Stalinist state since it expelled IAEA inspectors in 2002 after Washington accused it of a clandestine effort to refine nuclear fuel. Clearance for IAEA monitors to fly into North Korea was expected once Pyongyang has received a first batch of fuel later this week, pledged as part of its February disarmament accord with the United States and four other powers. IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said he was pleased with the agreement they reached. "This is the beginning of the process, it's going to be long and complex process, but I welcome the return of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) to verification process," he said. The Agency is expecting to get monitors into North Korea within the next week or two. "Shutting down the facilities according to our experts will not take much time -- probably a few days," he told reporters. "But then we will have to install cameras and put other equipment in place to insure that we are able to monitor the shutting down of these facilities. So these activities are going to happen in the next couple of weeks I hope," he added. North Korea agreed on Feb. 13 to close Yongbyon and take steps to disable all its nuclear facilities in exchange for 950,000 more tonnes of fuel oil or aid of equivalent value. Elbaradei also told reporters IAEA senior officials would go to Tehran on Tuesday for talks to flesh out Iran's chief negotiators Ali Larijani's offer of a plan of action to clear up longstanding IAEA questions about the nature of Irans programme. "We are having a mission going to Iran tomorrow to discuss with Iranian authorities ways and means to resolve outstanding issues that have to do with nature and scope of the Iranian programme. This is again something I very much welcome because this was a basis for the whole Iranian crisis in the last four years that ended up with the file going in front of the Security Council," Elbaradei said. He said that there were signs Iran was slowing down the installation of centrifuge machines, but the Agency would have to continue reporting in this. "We will continue to report on this. This is a decision Iran has to make - they can accelerate the process, they can slow down the process. My hope, my trust, is that at this stage, at this delicate stage, ideally they will even freeze what they have at the present stage," Elbaradei said. Western powers recently condemned Tehran's further expansion of enrichment work in defiance of U.N. demands, suspecting the programme is secretly aimed at producing atom bombs, and said they were mulling more sanctions against Tehran. A series of exploratory talks between Iranian chief negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana have yielded no breakthrough on the core dispute of suspension in the Iranian crisis. The Islamic Republic has condemned U.N. Security Council pressure to shelve as illegal, insisting its programme aims only at generating electricity and vowing to press on no matter what.

ITN Source | July 9, 2007

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