North Korea Cooperating With Nuclear Inspectors, IAEA Says

U.N. inspectors completed the first stage of shuttering North Korea’s main nuclear reactor without any resistance from Pyongyang, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, July 30).

“We have a full cooperation with the D.P.R.K. authorities,” said departing International Atomic Energy Agency inspector Adel Tolba. 

Tolba and his nine-member team supervised the initial shutdown of the main Yongbyon nuclear reactor.  They were replaced Saturday by a fresh group of six agency inspectors.

“We finished what was planned,” Tolba said today at the Pyongyong airport.  “Assessment will be done in Vienna.”

The U.N. nuclear watchdog must still address a North Korean nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, fuel production facility and two half-built reactors, AP reported (Associated Press/Time, July 31).

Meanwhile, the Philippines’ foreign secretary yesterday issued support for six-party North Korean denuclearization talks on the fringes of an Asian regional security conference in Manila, Business World reported.

Philippine Foreign Minister Alberto Romulo encouraged the nuclear discussions during a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun.

All participants in the nuclear negotiations—the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas—are represented this week at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forum, but no nuclear disarmament talks have been scheduled, said Philippine Foreign Ministry spokesman Claro Cristobal.

During their meeting, Pak and Romulo vowed to forge closer ties between Manila and Pyongyang.

Cristobal said the countries would cooperate in areas of energy, culture and information technology, but declined to elaborate, Business World reported.

“Specific areas for future cooperation,” included energy, culture and communications technology, Cristobal added without elaboration.

Romulo also christened an ASEAN nuclear watchdog yesterday, promising it would work towards building a meaningful regional nonproliferation regime.

“(ASEAN) wants that those who have [a nuclear capability] won’t proliferate, and that those who don’t have it won’t do tests,” Romulo said at the inaugural meeting of the Commission for the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone.

As part of the nonproliferation framework, the Philippines will petition ASEAN members and forum observers to join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Romulo said.  India, Pakistan and North Korea, all attending the conference, have so far refused to sign the nuclear testing ban (Business World, July 30).

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