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IAEA Demands North to Restore Inspection Devices

Posted January. 06, 2003 22:22,   

한국어

The IAEA announced yesterday that North Korea`s violation threatened the whole world`s nuclear safety. Then, the organization demanded that North should restore all the seals and inspection cameras, and start dialog with the IAEA to resume the inspection.

The statement was unanimously adopted by 35 governor countries of the IAEA, which took part in the special meeting of the board of governors held in Wein, Austria yesterday.

The IAEA in the resolution demanded that North Korea should restore the inspection devices for its nuclear facilities including the 5MW reactor, the water tank storing spent nuclear fuel rods, the radiochemical lab and the fuel-rod manufacturing plant. In addition, the IAEA urged North Korea to readmit the weapons inspectors. North Korea has broken seals and shut down cameras for those facilities. Moreover, it kicked three IAEA inspectors out.

But the governing board of the IAEA decided not to send the North nuke issue to the U.N. Security Council for now. One IAEA official confirmed, "Our board members agreed on the conclusion that North Korea want to reactivate its nuclear facilities not to generate electricity, but to make bombs. We have to modify the pace. The weapons inspectors will report on Iraq to the UN Security Council near the end of this month."

In the meanwhile, the South Korean delegation visiting Washington, D.C. for participation in the TCOG will hold a series of bilateral talks on January 6 (local time, or EST) with the United States and Japan in the conference room at the State Department to discuss the North nuke issue. On January 7th, representatives from the countries will have a joint session of the TCOG for about an hour and a half starting 9:15 a.m. (local time).

One senior South Korean delegate confirmed, "Three countries agree that all these crisis and tension have arisen out of North Korea`s program to develop enriched plutonium. Therefore, we will discuss ways to have North abandon its nuclear weapons program."



Young-Sik Kim Jei-Gyoon Park spear@donga.com phark@donga.com