U.N. nuclear watchdog officials visiting North Korea traveled on Thursday to a reactor complex that the secretive state has promised to mothball under an aid-for-disarmament deal.
The visit to Yongbyon is the first by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials since Pyongyang expelled the Vienna-based agency's inspectors in December 2002.
The communist state subsequently walked out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, announced that it had atomic bombs and, last year, conducted its first nuclear test.
"This is not an inspection. We are here to negotiate and we will see where we are on Friday evening -- what we have on the table at that time," IAEA nuclear safeguards director Olli Heinonen was quoted as saying as he left Pyongyang for the plant.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said that if the team finalized terms for an inspection mission, the agency's 35-nation board of governors would meet -- probably on July 9 -- to ratify the deal.
Inspectors would then be deployed immediately to North Korea.
North Korea's nuclear program, which dates back to at least the 1980s, is centered at Yongbyon, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang.
The sprawling complex of more than 100 buildings includes a five-megawatt reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant where weapons-grade material can be extracted from spent fuel rods.
The disarmament deal, under which Pyongyang would receive energy aid, security guarantees and better diplomatic standing in return for scrapping its nuclear arms programs, was stalled for weeks by a dispute over some $25 million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank at Washington's behest. - Source: DDNEWS India
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