North Korea has resumed steps to disable its nuclear reactor under renewed monitoring, the UN atomic watchdog said, after a deal with Washington to save the disarmament process from collapse.
"Disablement work has resumed as was promised yesterday. We're back to the previous status quo," an official at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said.
North Korea readmitted IAEA monitors to its Yongbyon nuclear complex yesterday and pledged to restart measures to eliminate its atom bomb programme, following a pact with Washington that defused rows over how to verify the process. North Korea reinstated UN monitoring of the reactor as well as a mothballed nuclear fuel-fabrication facility and reprocessing plant that had produced weapons-grade plutonium.
Pyongyang halted dismantlement a few weeks ago in the escalating dispute with Washington but by then the facilities had been largely taken apart, to the point where it would take about a year to reverse the process.
North Korea had barred the inspectors from Yongbyon last Thursday in anger over Washington's refusal to remove it from a sponsors-of-terrorism blacklist in a dispute over the extent of verification measures required for denuclearisation.
The US State Department announced on Saturday that it had delisted the reclusive Stalinist state after Pyongyang agreed to a series of verification steps.
North Korea agreed to access for experts to all declared nuclear facilities and, based on "mutual consent", undeclared sites.
The isolated, impoverished North was keen to get off the blacklist so it can draw on international financing for modernisation and be freed from trade sanctions.
Reuters