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Nuclear experts from the U.S., China and Russia have wound up a five-day visit to North Korea, where they inspected the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. On Sunday, they reached a draft agreement with North Korean officials ensuring that the facilities cannot work for several years once they have been disabled. North Korea was cooperative, even showing them blueprints of the key facilities, including the 5-megawatt atomic reactor.
The North also apparently accepted a proposal that nuclear experts led by Americans would oversee the disablement process. This bodes well for a roadmap on disablement to be reached in six-nation nuclear talks that resume in Beijing on Wednesday, including concrete methods based on the experts' visit.
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A team of American experts, including Sung Kim, the director of the Korea Desk at the U.S. State Department, gets in an elevator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade after arriving in Seoul from North Korea on Saturday. The team visited the North to oversee the disablement of its nuclear weapons program.
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"We've confirmed North Korea's intention basically to carry out the disablement process before the end of this year and avoid no technical steps to ensure this,¡± a South Korean government official said. ¡°The North also expressed an intention to accept the deal, ensuring that it would take a considerable period of time to restore the facilities to their previous status if it attempted to do so once they¡¯re disabled." The official added the experts scrutinized all facilities they had wanted to look at and studied the blueprints, which enabled them to work out the procedures. ¡°That North Korea even took the blueprints out of its closet shows that it really intends to disable the facilities," he added.
However, the agreement is limited to the facilities at Yongbyon but excludes any already produced nuclear weapons and an estimated stockpile of 40 to 50 kg of plutonium with which it could produce more nuclear arms.
The nine nuclear experts -- seven Americans, one Chinese and one Russian -- inspected the 5-megawatt atomic reactor, a reprocessing facility, and a production facility for nuclear fuel rods on Wednesday and Thursday. They then held talks with North Korean engineers in Pyongyang on Friday. The American experts traveled overland, arriving in the truce village of Panmunjom on Saturday, and briefed South Korean officials on their visit to the North. Sung Kim, the director of the Korea Desk at the U.S. State Department, who led the team, described the visit as ¡°useful." South Korea's deputy chief nuclear negotiator Lim Sung-nam said, "I believe that the team's negotiations with North Korean experts were positive and businesslike."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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