By DPA
Washington : North Korea has begun disabling its primary nuclear facilities under US supervision, officials here said.
While US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Monday that he was unable to give details about what work had been done at the nuclear complex in Yongbyon, 100 km north of Pyongyang, he said it had gotten under way.
“They are on-scene, and the work is under way,” he said of a US team of nuclear experts who arrived Thursday in North Korea and travelled to Yongbyon at the weekend.
The disablement of the facility would be the fulfilment of the second phase of a February agreement in which Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its nuclear programme in exchange for economic and energy aid and the normalization of diplomatic relations with Washington and Tokyo.
In the second phase, North Korea would disable the complex to the extent that bringing it up to operational capabilities again would take an extended amount of time and be expensive.
The first phase was completed in July when North Korea shut down the Yongbyon reactor. A month ago, North Korea said it would disable the facility and declare its nuclear stockpile by the end of the year.
Casey said the US team would remain at Yongbyon until the disablement of the complex’s five-megawatt reactor, its nuclear fuel-reprocessing plant and a fuel fabrication facility was completed.
The spokesman added that discussions about North Korea laying out its nuclear programme were continuing.
“Certainly, we want to get a look at a declaration as soon as we can and be able to make sure that we are in a position to verify that that declaration is, in fact, full and complete,” he said.
North Korea has produced weapons-grade nuclear material at the Yongbyon site. Progress in ending its nuclear programme came this year in six-nation talks that involved the US, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
Those talks began in 2003, but the recent progress came after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, provoking worldwide condemnation and giving fresh impetus to the talks.
The top US nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, said at the weekend on a visit to Japan that he expected to receive a list of North Korea’s nuclear programmes within two weeks and to see the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear facilities begin Jan 1, soon after the disablement work is finished.
The Yongbyon disablement should take two months and included such work as discharging nuclear fuel, removing radioactive material and cleaning up a radioactive pond where discharged fuel is deposited.
“I am pleased to say we’ve had good cooperation from the DPRK technicians and experts on the spot,” Hill said, referring to North Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.