UN cameras set up at N Korea atom complex-diplomat

VIENNA, Aug 9 (Reuters) UN monitors have set up surveillance cameras needed to help verify a continued shutdown of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, a diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency said today.

Half-a-dozen IAEA monitors will exit the Stalinist state this weekend after completing the installation of cameras and be replaced by a smaller team of two to keep watch, the diplomat said in Vienna, where the UN agency is based.

''It will be an ongoing verification process now, a regular rotation of monitors with cameras and seals on the equipment, minding the store. We're not aware of any difficulties.'' An initial team of 10 IAEA monitors confirmed last month that Pyongyang had shut its Yongbyon nuclear complex, the source of weapons-grade plutonium used in a nuclear test explosion last October that shocked the world.

North Korea had expelled IAEA inspectors in 2002 after a 1994 disarmament deal fell apart.

Last February, Pyongyang agreed with five powers to mothball its nuclear infrastructure in return for a first instalment in massive energy aid to the impoverished state. The five are the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

But they face an uphill battle in planned negotiations to get paranoid North Korea to carry out full nuclear disarmament by disabling its atomic facilities, accounting for all its nuclear devices and materials and doing away with them.

The United States said on Monday there could be a ministerial meeting as early as September between North Korea and four other countries to advance the disarmament process.

But a potential stumbling block to the disarmament-for-aid deal arose on Wednesday when North Korea called on regional powers to give it 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil a month.

REUTERS AE BST2215