ROK, US expect DPRK nuke shutdown in weeks

FE Team | Published: June 19, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

SEOUL, Jun 18 (AFP): South Korean and US negotiators said Monday they expect North Korea to start closing down its reactor within weeks as the first step in a promised nuclear disarmament programme.
The North announced Saturday it had invited an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team to discuss a shutdown, saying a banking dispute which had blocked progress on the February disarmament pact was almost over.
The announcement raised hopes of a breakthrough after four months of tortuous negotiations to resolve a row over millions of dollars in North Korean funds, which were frozen at a Macau bank in 2005 under US sanctions.
"In the next two or three weeks, I hope, the IAEA monitoring and verification team will visit North Korea and begin to shut down its nuclear reactor," Chun Yung-Woo, the South's chief nuclear negotiator, told AFP.
His US counterpart Christopher Hill was also optimistic about closing the Yongbyon reactor, the source of raw material for bomb-making plutonium.
"Our sense is that we will be down to a matter of weeks," he told reporters in Beijing.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a North Korean diplomat as saying the reactor would be sealed in the second half of July.
"According to our specialists, halting the reactor technically requires about a month. Hence we expect to seal it, in accordance with agreements achieved during six-party talks, in the second half of July 2007," the agency quoted the unidentified diplomat as saying in Beijing.
"In the most favourable circumstances...the process could take about three weeks," the diplomat said.
The North has not yet acknowledged receipt of more than 20 million dollars transferred from the Macau bank, as Washington expects it to do, nor has it given a public and firm commitment to shut Yongbyon.
But both Seoul and Washington have welcomed Saturday's announcement.
Hill was to travel to Seoul later in the day for talks on pushing the process forward, and will go on to Tokyo Tuesday.
The IAEA has not confirmed what the next step will be. But reports say a preliminary inspectors' mission to Pyongyang, possibly this week, will work out technical details and see what needs to be done.