The International Nuclear Energy Agency (IAEA) Monday gave the go ahead for inspectors to go to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to verify the promised shutdown of its nuclear facilities.
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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (L) briefs the media during a board of governors meeting in Vienna July 9, 2007. The U.N. nuclear watchdog's governing body on Monday agreed to send inspectors to North Korea to verify Pyongyang is shutting down its atomic bomb programme, diplomats said。
The IAEA's board of governors Monday staged a special session in which they approved a report submitted last Tuesday by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei on the verification and supervision of the shutdown of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon in DPRK.
Diplomats in Vienna told Xinhua that members at the closed-door session had unanimously ratified the report.
The mission will begin immediately after Pyongyang receives the first batch of fuel oil, anticipated later this week.
In his address, ElBaradei welcomed the DPRK's "return to the course of nuclear inspection" and admiration for its "active cooperation" with the IAEA's working-level delegation, headed by the agency's deputy director general Olli Heinonen, during its visit to the DPRK in late June.
The report ratification by the board of governors provided the legal basis for the IAEA's new mission.
But the IAEA's inspectors still need an official invitation from the DPRK, the diplomats in Vienna told Xinhua.
At the six-party talks in February, involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the DPRK and the U.S., Pyongyang pledged to shut down the Yongbyon reactor within 60 days in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.
However, denuclearization was held up when the DPRK insisted that its 25 million U.S. dollars frozen at the Banco Delta Asia in Macao had to be returned before any nuclear facilities could be shut down.
An IAEA delegation visited Pyongyang in late June and reached a consensus with the DPRK on the verification procedure of the reactor shutdown after the frozen fund dispute between the U.S. and the DPRK was resolved.
The June visit was the U.N. watchdog's first to the DPRK since late 2002, when the country expelled IAEA nuclear inspectors and later withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
