IAEA team heads for North Korea nuclear complex

TOKYO, Jun 28 (Reuters) U N nuclear watchdog officials visiting North Korea travelled today to a reactor complex that the secretive state has promised to mothball under an aid-for-disarmament deal, Kyodo news agency reported.

The visit to Yongbyon is the first by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials since Pyongyang expelled the Vienna-based agency's inspectors in December 2002.

The communist state subsequently walked out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, announced that it had atomic bombs and, last year, conducted its first nuclear test.

''This is not an inspection. We are here to negotiate and we will see where we are on Friday evening -- what we have on the table at that time,'' IAEA nuclear safeguards director Olli Heinonen was quoted as saying as he left Pyongyang for the plant.

A diplomat close to the IAEA said that if the team finalised terms for an inspection mission, the agency's 35-nation board of governors would meet -- probably on July 9 -- to ratify the deal.

Inspectors would then be deployed immediately to North Korea.

North Korea's nuclear programme, which dates back to at least the 1980s, is centred at Yongbyon, about 100 km north of Pyongyang.

The sprawling complex of more than 100 buildings includes a five-megawatt reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant where weapons-grade material can be extracted from spent fuel rods.

The disarmament deal, under which Pyongyang would receive energy aid, security guarantees and better diplomatic standing in return for scrapping its nuclear arms programmes, was stalled for weeks by a dispute over some million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank at Washington's behest.

Following the release of the funds, North Korea agreed this week to implement the deal that it struck with South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan in February.

RICE, FUEL OIL South Korea responded quickly to the breakthrough, announcing that it would resume rice aid to its impoverished neighbour.

Seoul said yesterday its officials would meet their counterparts in the North Korean town of Kaesong tomorrow and Saturday to discuss the supply of 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, the first instalment promised under the Feb. 13 deal.

Oil industry sources said the government had contacted at least two domestic refiners about securing the oil.

Overshadowing the apparent progress, North Korea has fired at least two short-range missiles over the past month and South Korea's Yonhap news agency said it may have done so again on Wednesday.

South Korean officials and U S Pentagon officials played down the launches as routine. But the White House said it was ''deeply troubled'' by the test-firings, and Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki urged Pyongyang today to refrain from actions that would increase regional tension.

''What is important in the six-country talks is for North Korea to reliably and concretely implement the initial steps under the Feb. 13 agreement,'' Shiozaki told a news conference.

Russia's envoy to the talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, said developments in North Korea would need to be assessed before the six parties met again.

Speaking to reporters after meeting his Japanese counterpart in Tokyo, Losyukov said the hope was to resume the process as soon as possible ''probably in July''.

REUTERS SLD HT1250