IAEA says North Korea Nuclear Reactor Shut

UN nuclear inspectors verified the shut down of North Korea's reactor, confirming the most significant move to curb Pyongyang's atomic ambitions in years, but more remains to be done, the head of the IAEA said on Monday.

North Korea said over the weekend it had shut its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which provides the secretive state with material for arms-grade plutonium, around the time it received the first shipment of 6,200 tonnes of oil provided by Seoul as part of an aid-for-disarmament deal.

"The reactor has been shut down," International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters in Bangkok.

The next step will be to verify that North Korea has shut other facilities at Yongbyon, located about 100 km (60 miles north of Pyongyang -- which include a plant to make plutonium.

"It's a very important step that we are taking this week, but it's a long way to go," ElBaradei said.

He has said it will take IAEA personnel, who arrived in North Korea on Saturday, about a month to install seals and monitoring equipment to make sure Pyongyang keeps the reactor closed.

Christopher Hilll, the chief US envoy to North Korean nuclear talks, said the reactor closure marked a good beginning.

"Its significance can best be measured when we see additional steps because we are not interested on some partial denuclearisation," Hill said in an interview with Reuters.

Hill wants Pyongyang to now move to disable its nuclear facilities and provide an inventory of its nuclear arms programmes, including one to enrich uranium for weapons.

"I think you have to look at each stage as more difficult than the previous stage. It is a little like one of those video games -- every level becomes more difficult than the previous level," Hill said.

"The most difficult level of this game that we are in is the actual surrender of weapons and abandonment of all this fissile material," he said, adding he hopes it could all be done by the end of 2008.

MORE FUEL OIL

South Korea sent a second batch of 7,500 tonnes of heavy fuel oil to energy-starved North Korea on Monday, a Unification Ministry official said.

A provision of 50,000 tonnes of oil from the South is part of a February 13 deal reached among the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China on first suspending the operation of the North's nuclear facilities and then disabling them.

The impoverished North will receive an additional 950,000 tonnes of oil, security assurances and be better able to conduct international trade if it completely scraps its nuclear arms programme -- considered one of Asia's biggest security threats.

The six-way talks are set to resume on Wednesday in Beijing to map out the next phase of ending the nuclear programme.

In 1994, North Korea froze the Yongbyon reactor in exchange for energy aid. In late 2002, the United States accused Pyongyang of violating that deal by having a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.

In December 2002, North Korea said it was restarting the Yongbyon reactor. It disabled IAEA surveillance devices and expelled their inspectors.


(By Jon Herskovitz, with additional reporting by Ed Cropley in Bangkok and Jack Kim in Seoul)