The IAEA delegation will apparently visit Pyongyang this week to discuss which facilities will be shut down and how. North Korea and the IAEA have already reached agreement on shutting down the 5 MW nuclear reactor, a radiation chemistry lab, a nuclear fuel rod production facility, the Yongbyon 50 MW nuclear reactor, and the Taecheon 200 MW nuclear reactor. If talks go smoothly, the IAEA will report the outcome to a special executive commission, which will approve them and dispatch inspectors to North Korea.

IAEA inspectors monitored North Korea's freezing of facilities under the 1994 Geneva Accords, but Pyongyang in 2002 removed the seals from the nuclear facilities and monitoring cameras and expelled the inpsectors.

On Saturday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported Ri Je-son, director-general of North Korea's General Department of Atomic Energy, sent a letter to IAEA Secretary-General Mohamed ElBaradei. "We are inviting a working-group IAEA delegation since we have confirmed that our funds frozen at Banco Delta Asia are now in the final stage of being transferred out,” Ri wrote. The invitation came “to discuss the procedures of the IAEA monitoring of the shutdown of nuclear facilities at Yongbyon” under a Feb. 13 denuclearization agreement, KCNA quoted him as saying.

(englishnews@chosun.com )