NORTH KOREA:North Korea has said it had shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facilities and was now ready to start dismantling its atomic weapons programmes, once Washington lifts its sanctions against the secretive communist nation.
A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tonnes of fuel oil arrived early on Saturday at the port of Sonbong on North Korea's northeastern coast, the unification ministry in Seoul said, and the reactor was shut down after its arrival.
UN inspectors were due to verify the closure yesterday.
"Immediately after the arrival of the first heavy fuel oil, the facilities were shut down and the International Atomic Energy Agency personnel will verify that," said Kim Myong Gil, minister at the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York.
South Korea's nuclear envoy, Chun Yung-woo, described the shutdown as a "milestone".
In a landmark deal struck on February 13th, North Korea promised to shut down its nuclear facilities and invite back inspectors from the IAEA for monitoring in return for huge quantities of energy aid from five of the countries taking part in six-party talks about resolving the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula: South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
However, the implementation of the deal was conditional on the freeing up of €18 million frozen in Banco Delta Asia, a Macau bank, and a resolution became bogged down over American financial
sanctions.
The money was finally lodged in a Russian bank in late June.
In return for shutting down and
disabling its
key nuclear
facilities, North Korea will receive one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil. South Korea is responsible for the first shipment of 50,000 tonnes.
The cost of the aid is to be borne equally by five of the nations in the six-party talks.
However, Japan says it will not provide any aid to North Korea until the decades-old issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang is resolved.
Pyongyang said it was now up to the US to abandon "their hostile policies" toward North Korea.
The next steps in terms of the February deal included the North making a declaration of its nuclear programme and disabling the facilities, but this would only happen if Washington removed wider economic sanctions and removed North Korea from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.
"After the shutdown, then we will discuss about the economic sanctions lifting and removing of the terrorism list.
"All those things should be discussed and resolved," Mr Kim said.
The main US envoy on the North Korea nuclear issue, assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill, has said he believes the North's nuclear facilities could be completely disabled by the end of the year, and added that he expected a complete declaration of its atomic programmes within months.
The IAEA would probably take about at least a day to verify the closure, as there were five sites to inspect, Mr Hill said in Tokyo.
He was touring the region in advance of the next round of six-party talks, which are planned to resume on Wednesday in Beijing.