North Korea reactor shut, US says, hails first step

TOKYO, July 15 (Reuters) North Korea has told the United States it has shut down its nuclear reactor as part of a disarmament deal, the US State Department said after a team of UN nuclear monitors arrived in Pyongyang.

"We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team that has arrived", State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington yesterday.

North Korea said last week it would consider suspending the operation of its nuclear facilities as soon as it received the first shipment of oil from South Korea under a Feb 13 aid-for-disarmament deal.

A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tonnes of fuel oil docked yesterday at a port in northeastern North Korea.

McCormack said US negotiators looked forward to the next step of the Feb 13 agreement, in which Pyongyang "has committed to declaring all its nuclear programmes and disabling all its existing nuclear facilities".

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

Top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill gave the news a cautious welcome today.

"This is just a first step," Hill, who is visiting Japan, told Japanese media.

"This is only a meaningful step insofar as it will be followed by other steps." On the IAEA inspectors, he said: "I think by the end of today, they will be able to give us reports on the five facilities." South Korea's Foreign Ministry hailed Pyongyang's decision as an encouraging development.

"North Korea's measures to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and accept the IAEA inspectors are meaningful because it is the first step in implementing their denuclearisation agreement," a ministry statement said.

Word of the reactor shutdown came on the day the IAEA team reached Pyongyang.

FOUR-YEAR GAP The leader of the team had said earlier in Beijing they would go straight to Yongbyon yesterday to begin work at the complex, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.

The team of 10 experts is the first to return to monitor the shutdown after a 4 1/2-year absence.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said it would take about a month to set up the monitoring equipment. "I am quite optimistic that this is a good step in the right direction," he said.

In his statement, McCormack said: "We, along with all our other six-party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula." The six-party talks, where North Korea sits down with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, are due to resume on Wednesday to map out the next stage of the disarmament process.

The five have promised North Korea massive economic aid and better diplomatic ties for scrapping its nuclear arms programme.

"How smoothly the rest of the operation will go very much depends on how progress will be made in the six-party talks," ElBaradei said.

"It is going to be a long process." US nuclear envoy Hill told Japanese media yesterday he expected North Korea to produce a list of all its nuclear facilities in the coming weeks or months.

"We would expect the comprehensive list, declaration (of North Korea's nuclear programmes) to be in a matter of several weeks, possibly couple of months," Hill said.

In 2002, the United States accused North Korea of operating a covert uranium enrichment programme in violation of a 1994 nuclear-freeze deal. In December 2002, the North expelled IAEA inspectors and said it would restart its reactor. (Additional reporting by Lee Jin-joo in Seoul, Chris Buckley and Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Chisa Fujioka in Tokyo) Reuters GT RS1434