North Korea told the United States it has shut down its Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor as part of a disarmament deal, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday after a team of U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived in Pyongyang.
"We have shut down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon after we received the first shipment of heavy oil," the North's KCNA news agency cited one of its spokesman as saying, according to Xinhua's English news Web site.
North Korea said last week it would consider suspending the operation of its nuclear facilities as soon as it received the first shipment of oil from South Korea under a February 13 aid-for-disarmament deal.
A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tonnes of fuel oil docked on Saturday at a port in northeastern North Korea.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that U.S. negotiators looked forward to the next step of the February 13 agreement, in which Pyongyang "has committed to declaring all its nuclear programmes and disabling all its existing nuclear facilities".
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.
Top U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill gave the news a cautious welcome on Sunday.
"This is just a first step," Hill, who is visiting Japan, told Japanese media.
"This is only a meaningful step insofar as it will be followed by other steps."
On the IAEA inspectors, he said: "I think by the end of today, they will be able to give us reports on the five facilities."
South Korea's Foreign Ministry hailed Pyongyang's decision as an encouraging development.
"North Korea's measures to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and accept the IAEA inspectors are meaningful because it is the first step in implementing their denuclearisation agreement," a ministry statement said.
Word of the reactor shutdown came on the day the IAEA team reached Pyongyang.
FOUR-YEAR GAP
The leader of the team had said earlier in Beijing they would go straight to Yongbyon on Saturday to begin work at the complex, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The team of 10 experts is the first to return to monitor the shutdown after a 4 1/2-year absence.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said it would take about a month to set up the monitoring equipment. "I am quite optimistic that this is a good step in the right direction," he said.
In his statement, McCormack said: "We, along with all our other six-party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."
The six-party talks, where North Korea sits down with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, are due to resume on Wednesday to map out the next stage of the disarmament process.
The five have promised North Korea massive economic aid and better diplomatic ties for scrapping its nuclear arms programme.
"How smoothly the rest of the operation will go very much depends on how progress will be made in the six-party talks," ElBaradei said. "It is going to be a long process."
U.S. nuclear envoy Hill told Japanese media on Saturday he expected North Korea to produce a list of all its nuclear facilities in the coming weeks or months.
"We would expect the comprehensive list, declaration (of North Korea's nuclear programmes) to be in a matter of several weeks, possibly couple of months," Hill said.
In 2002, the United States accused North Korea of operating a covert uranium enrichment programme in violation of a 1994 nuclear-freeze deal. In December 2002, the North expelled IAEA inspectors and said it would restart its reactor. - DDNEWS India
