Nuclear inspectors say North Korea cooperating

BEIJING/MANILA, July 31 (Reuters) North Korea has been cooperating fully with nuclear inspectors monitoring the shutdown of its atomic complex, the UN team said today.

Meanwhile, a North Korean foreign ministry official promised steps to improve ties with the United States if Washington scrapped its trade ban and dropped North Korea from a list of countries Washington says sponsor terrorism.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff arrived in North Korea on July 14 to monitor the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which the North closed as part of a disarmament pact reached in six-country talks in February.

A reactor and uranium fuel processing plant at Yongbyon can produce the plutonium that North Korea used in its first nuclear test-blast in October last year.

''In doing our actions we had complete cooperation from the DPRK authorities,'' the head of the IAEA group, Adel Tolba, told reporters in Beijing after arriving from Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Tolba would not comment on the state of the North's nuclear facilities; such weighty issues are left to agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who is likely to issue a report on the shutdown in September. But Tolba gave no sign of any problems.

''We think that what we need to perform was performed,'' he said.

''We did perform all the mandated activities.'' He said the team was heading back to its Vienna headquarters where an assessment would take place.

TAG-TEAM The 10 returning nuclear monitors are part of a ''tag-team'' who will watch over Yongbyon while six-party talks seek agreement on advancing the initial disarmament steps. A replacement team of six IAEA personnel arrived in North Korea over the weekend.

North Korea halted the antiquated Yongbyon complex earlier this month after it began receiving heavy fuel shipments it was offered in return in the February deal.

The North also invited back IAEA personnel. They were thrown out of the country in late 2002 after a 1994 disarmament deal collapsed.

Jong Song-il, a spokesman for North Korea's delegation at an East Asian security meeting in Manila, said Pyongyang had been ''very active'' in fulfilling its commitments and the other parties needed to do the same.

''On the part of the United States, for example, delisting the DPRK from the list of the terrorist-supporting states and also removal of the enemy trade act,'' he said in English.

''At the same time we will come out with more concrete actions in the normalisation of the bilateral relationship between DPRK and the United States.'' The United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, and Washington bars trade with the Communist country, although Pyongyang is keen to eventually establish formal ties.

The next step of the disarmament deal, hammered out between North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, calls on Pyongyang to ''disable'' its nuclear facilities and provide a full accounting of its nuclear weapons programmes.

Reuters JT DB2239