US nuclear experts expelled from N Korea

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BEIJING, April 17 (AFP): Four US experts monitoring the shutdown of a North Korean nuclear plant were expelled Friday from the isolated nation, Chinese media reported, days after they were told to leave.
The four departed Pyongyang's Sunan airport for Beijing "under the DPRK's (North Korea's) expulsion order," the report said.
North Korea pulled out of nuclear disarmament talks Tuesday and ordered US and UN nuclear inspectors out of the country after the United Nations Security Council condemned Pyongyang for an April 5 rocket launch.
The UN nuclear inspectors left North Korea Thursday.
The hardline communist state also announced plans to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium at its Yongbyon plant that had been shut down under an agreement reached at the disarmament talks.
The Yongbyon complex produced enough plutonium for a 2006 nuclear test and for several other bombs until it was closed in 2007 under a six-nation deal brokered with China, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Reuters adds: Russia's foreign minister will visit North Korea next week, a source said Friday, as regional powers try to prevent the state from restarting its nuclear arms plant and defuse tensions that have rattled regional security.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit North Korea next week, a foreign ministry source told the reporter.
Lavrov will try to sway the reclusive North to return to six-way nuclear talks and abide by a disarmament-for-aid deal, according to a separate report from the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo.
China, the North's biggest benefactor, wants the United States to engage Pyongyang directly in a bid to ease escalating tensions, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told Japan's Nikkei newspaper.
"(China) hopes for an improvement and development of US-North Korea relations," Yang, a former ambassador to Washington, said in an interview in Beijing.
China and Russia prevented North Korea from being hit with fresh sanctions for the launch, widely seen as a disguised long-range missile test that violated U.N. resolutions.
But they backed a UN Security Council statement last Monday condemning North Korea for the April 5 launch. Until that statement Beijing had avoided open criticism, instead suggesting it was a legitimate satellite launch as Pyongyang claimed.