North Korea is ready to permit foreign inspections of its nuclear laboratory despite threats to revive its suspected nuclear program, a report said Sunday.
The North’s isotope production laboratory in its Yongbyon nuclear complex will be open to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yonhap news agency said.
It quoted a South Korean government source as saying: “The North offered to open its the laboratory to inspection at talks with IAEA officials in early November.”
The laboratory has not been the target of inspections demanded by a 1994 accord under which the North froze its suspected nuclear program in exchange for nuclear reactors producing less weapons-grade plutonium.
With its energy crisis ever worsening, the North has threatened to abandon the 1994 agreement, insisting Washington should compensate losses caused by delays in building new reactors.
The report followed the arrival of Charles Kartman, executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), in Pyongyang on Saturday.
Kartman leads a consortium funding the 4.6-billion-dollar project to replace the North’s old graphite reactors.
The new reactors were to be built by 2003, but delays have pushed back the finish until at least 2008. Groundbreaking on the new reactors started only two months ago.
But the United States and the IAEA have complained of little progress in its effort to verify the North’s past nuclear activities. They wants the inspections to begin now.
Pyongyang is only required to admit inspectors when a significant portion of the project as defined in the agreement is completed.
On Friday, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher warned the construction of new reactors might suffer further delays if the Stalinist state does not allow inspectors in to verify safety and security procedures.
“This has to be done before they get to a certain stage in construction otherwise it can’t proceed,” Boucher said. “In order to do that on time, the schedule means that they have to start now.”
Construction began in earnest only in September on two nuclear power reactors in North Korea to produce less weapons-grade plutonium than the communist state’s old reactors, closed under a 1994 accord.
Under the 1994 deal, an international consortium is to provide the reactors to the North after the communist state agreed to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons program.
But Pyongyang is only required to admit inspectors when a significant portion of the project as defined in the agreement is completed. Owing to delays, groundbreaking on the reactors started only two months ago.
According to experts’ estimates, the inspections to verify North Korea has dismantled its nuclear capability may now not be due until late 2004 or 2005.
But the United States and the IAEA say the inspection should begin now.
“It’s not a matter of showing up the day before the containment vessel arrives, it’s a matter of working over a period of something like three years,” Boucher said.
“That’s one of the points that we’ve always made: that you have to have that kind of inspection regime put in place and that should be starting now.”
The new reactors were originally to be built by 2003 but delays, including the withdrawal of half the North Korean workers over a wage dispute, have pushed back the finish until at least 2008.
US President George W. Bush on Monday urged North Korea to permit foreign inspectors to verify it is not producing weapons of mass destruction.
It was not clear then if Bush was pressing for inspections to take place sooner than required, although his administration has urged Pyongyang to improve verification and transparency while insisting it does not seek to renegotiate the terms of the 1994 deal.
