US Tours N. Korean Reactor, Gets All Access Sought

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials and nuclear experts toured the five megawatt nuclear reactor at North Korea's Yongbyon atomic complex on Wednesday and were allowed to see everything they wished, the State Department said.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the team was expected to return to Yongbyon on Thursday and to meet North Korean officials in Pyongyang on Friday to discuss how to disable the reactor before returning to the United States.

The U.S. team arrived in North Korea on Tuesday on a rare visit to survey the communist state's nuclear facilities.

Under a February six-party agreement among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, Pyongyang has agreed to disable all its nuclear facilities as a step toward ultimately abandoning its nuclear programs.

McCormack said any agreement on the practicalities of how to dismantle the facilities at Yongbyon would be reached within the six-party talks but that Friday's planned meetings in Pyongyang would begin to broach the issue.

"It's really to talk a little bit about some of their initial impressions about what they saw and how you might go about actually disabling the reactor," he said. "Any sort of agreement would happen withing the six-party context."