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International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei on Thursday expressed optimism about North Korea's shutdown of its nuclear facilities but added a note of caution about its future disposal of nuclear waste. The shutdown, ˇ°along with installing cameras and other monitoring equipment, will be completed in about a month or so,ˇ± the IAEA chief said at a press conference in Seoul.
But he expressed optimism only about the first stage. The second stage, where all North Korean nuclear facilities, including as yet unreported ones, are identified and dismantled, ˇ°is going to be a long process, we should not delude ourselvesˇ¦ It will take time to get a comprehensive solution,ˇ± he said. "How smoothly the rest of the operation will go very much depends on how progress will be made in the six-party talks.ˇ±
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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (R) speaks during a news conference with Korea's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Technology Kim Woo-sik (L) in Seoul on Thursday./REUTERS
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Responding to calls from the U.S. to refuse the North a light-water nuclear reactor, which makes it harder to produce fissionable material, ElBaradei said any country can in principle use a nuclear reactor as long as a transparency is guaranteed. Be it a light-water reactor or another type of reactor, what matters is whether there is sufficient transparency, he said. As for the North's return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, he said the matter should be discussed by a future round of the six-nation talks. "I hope that it leads to its return to NPT" as soon as possible, he said. But ElBaradei added he had no authority to force or persuade the North to do so.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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