SOUTH KOREA: The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday that South Korea's failure to promptly report research on the enrichment of uranium and plutonium separation to the UN agency was deeply worrying.
South Korea admitted earlier this month it had enriched a small amount of uranium in a revelation that may complicate tortuous attempts to persuade communist North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme.
Diplomats have said South Korea enriched a small amount of uranium to a purity close to the level needed for an atom bomb. Plutonium can also be used in the core of a nuclear weapon.
"It is a matter of serious concern that the conversion and enrichment of uranium and the separation of plutonium were not reported to the agency as required by [South Korea's] safeguards agreement," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mr Mohamed ElBaradei said in the text of a speech to the IAEA board.
Mr ElBaradei was referring to Seoul's agreement with the IAEA aimed at preventing the diversion of nuclear resources to secret weapons programmes. The safeguards agreement is required under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door morning session of the IAEA board of governors, Mr ElBaradei said he hoped to wrap up his investigation of South Korea's experiments quickly.
"We have a lot of work to do," Mr ElBaradei said. "I hope that we can finish by November, but if not we will continue." Seoul has denied having a nuclear weapons programme.
South Korea's ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Mr Cho Chang Beom, told reporters the research was conducted by ambitious scientists without the government's knowledge. He added that Seoul had been completely open about what he described as unfortunate scientific experimentation.
"Some would describe it as an incident, some would describe it as an accident," Mr Cho said about the research.
"These are very much isolated cases." Speaking on condition of anonymity, several diplomats close to the IAEA doubted the experiments were accidents.
"It looks as if the planning and preparation [for the experiments] went back much further and appears to have been far more calculated than the South Koreans would like the agency to believe," one diplomat said.
South Korea's envoy said Seoul had been entirely open with the IAEA, was not holding anything back and there would be no further revelations about its atomic activities.
While Mr Cho said South Korea had taken the initiative and approached the IAEA about its uranium enrichment experiments in 2000, Mr ElBaradei said it was IAEA inspectors who uncovered plutonium activities from the 1980s during inspections. - (Reuters)