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US urges caution on NKorea shutdown
AFP
TOKYO
Petroleumworld.com 07 16 07The chief US nuclear envoy said Sunday the world needs to watch North Korean moves cautiously as UN inspectors start verifying whether Pyongyang has shut down its main nuclear reactor.
"We need to caution everybody that this is just the first step," US envoy Christopher Hill said early Sunday, noting that Pyongyang had informed the US mission to the United Nations of the shutdown.
"This is only a meaningful step in so far as it will be followed by other steps," said Hill, who has spent years in negotiations over the North Korean nuclear programme.
He said the UN inspection team should get reports later Sunday on the exact situation at Yongbyon.
"I think by the end of today they will be able to give us reports on the five facilities," he said as he left the resort town of Hakone southwest of Tokyo.
North Korea confirmed later Sunday that it has shut down its Yongbyon atomic reactor, the first step in a process designed to rid it of nuclear weapons.
The announcement came a day after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrived in the secretive North to verify the reactor shutdown.
Hill remained cautious as he left Tokyo's Haneda airport for Seoul on Sunday.
"Obviously we are very pleased by this step. But we realise how long it took, how long it took to get here," he told reporters just before the public confirmation by North Korea.
The shutdown of the Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor, which produces raw material for bomb-making plutonium, is the first step in a nuclear disarmament deal reached with North Korea in February.
Under the pact the energy-starved North will eventually receive one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees, if it declares and dismantles all nuclear programmes.
A first shipment of the oil arrived from South Korea on Saturday.
The IAEA mission is the first UN inspection in the country since North Korea kicked inspectors out in December 2002 and re-started Yongbyon, which is at the core of its nuclear weapons programme.
Hill was in Japan ahead of a resumption of six-nation talks in Beijing on Wednesday on ending North Korea's nuclear programme.
The talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host nation China.
AFP 15 0940 GMT 07 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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