Wednesday, October 6, 2004
IAEA chief says world getting impatient with N Korea
Reuters Seoul, October 6
North Korea's two-year-old nuclear crisis has taxed the world's patience, the chief United Nations nuclear regulator said on Wednesday, urging communist Pyongyang to return to its disarmament treaty obligations.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also said that there was no comparison between South Korea's recently reported atomic experiments and North Korea's full-fledged reprocessing programme and weapons assertions.
"The six-party talks have been going on for quite awhile and the international community is getting impatient to see quick results and to see North Korea turning back to the non-proliferation regime," ElBaradei said.
North Korea has said that it would not rejoin six-party nuclear disarmament talks with South Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia until the South's recently disclosed atomic experiments were fully dealt with.
South Korea revealed last month that its scientists conducted without government approval or knowledge tests to enrich uranium four years ago and to separate plutonium in 1982.
ElBaradei said that the South Korean "experiments at laboratory-level" were very different from North Korea's "fully operating reprocessing plant" and Pyongyang's repeated claims to have turned some plutonium into a nuclear deterrent force.
"These are not two situations to be compared," ElBaradei told a news conference on the sidelines of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, a private group of experts and officials discussing disarmament.
"The Republic of Korea has been continuously under verification, under safeguards, while North Korea has moved out of the non-proliferation regime for over two years now," he said.
North Korea expelled IAEA monitors in late 2002 and quit the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in early 2003.
The moves followed US statements that North Korean officials had admitted to pursuing a secret uranium enrichment programme. North Korea denies having a uranium-based nuclear programme, but has repeated its assertion that it has made weapons-grade plutonium reprocessed from spent fuel rods to deter a US attack.
ElBaradei said the IAEA supported the six-party process and was keen to see diplomacy succeed to enable the UN nuclear watchdog to resume work in secretive North Korea.
"If and when we go back to North Korea we would like to have full-fledged verification to ensure that we are able to see all nuclear and nuclear-relevant activities to assure ourselves that North Korea's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes," he said.
IAEA inspectors would conduct more tours of South Korean nuclear facilities this month for additional work before the agency reports to its board of governors in November, he said.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.