NORTH KOREA:The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, said yesterday he would visit North Korea after receiving an invitation from the government there to discuss the freeze of North Korean nuclear facilities.
Mr ElBaradei said he had received an invitation from Pyongyang yesterday, after a deal was struck last week to shut down the country's nuclear complex in Yongbyon and allow UN inspectors to supervise the dismantlement.
"According to the letter, they would like to improve and normalise the relationship with the agency and hope to go back to being a member of the agency," Mr ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna after meeting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
"The first (issue) of course is how to develop a plan to freeze the Yongbyon facilities, and more importantly to make sure that they come back as a fully fledged member of the (International Atomic Energy) Agency," Mr ElBaradei said.
A spokeswoman for the IAEA added that Mr ElBaradei planned to visit North Korea after an IAEA board meeting next month.
North Korea agreed on February 13th to take steps towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300 million (€227 million) in aid under a deal President Bush hailed as the best chance to get it to scrap its atomic weapons programme.
The landmark agreement, reached four months after Pyongyang stunned the world with its first nuclear test, requires the secretive communist state to shut down the reactor at the heart of its nuclear ambitions and allow international inspections.
The accord also calls for concessions by the United States towards economically impoverished North Korea which Mr Bush once lumped together with Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil".
A top South Korean nuclear envoy said earlier yesterday there was still a long way to go before Pyongyang scraps its entire nuclear arms programme.
Chun Yung-woo, Seoul's chief envoy to six-way talks, said under the deal reached in Beijing, the faster and farther North Korea went toward shutting down its sole operating nuclear reactor and reprocessing facilities, the more aid the impoverished state would receive. - (Reuters)