IAEA: NKorea Renews UN Access to Nuclear Site

A South Korean woman reads a newspaper reporting the United States removed North Korea from its...

A South Korean woman reads a newspaper reporting the United States removed North Korea from its terrorism blacklist in Seoul, South Korea, Oct. 12, 2008. North Korea said Sunday it will resume disabling its main nuclear facilities, hours after the United States removed the communist country from a list of states that sponsor terrorism. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

(AP)

North Korea declared Monday that it will resume shutting down its nuclear program and allow U.N. experts to monitor the process, including making sure the plant that produced plutonium for its test bomb remains disabled.

The moves, revealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, were a strong indication that Pyongyang was making good on its pledge to return to a deal with the U.S., Russia, China, South Korea and Japan meant to strip it of its weapons-enabling nuclear program.

Pyongyang announced Sunday it would resume dismantlement in line with the deal offering political and energy rewards in exchange, after the U.S. removed North Korea from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.

"The agency inspectors were ... informed today that as of 14 October 2008, core discharge activities at the (nuclear) reactor would be resumed," said a restricted IAEA document to the agency's 35 board members obtained by The Associated Press. It said "monitoring and verification arrangements" of the U.N. nuclear agency also would be restarted.

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Separately, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said IAEA inspectors "will also now be permitted to reapply the containment and surveillance measures at the reprocessing facility." That meant agency seals taken off the plant and monitoring cameras recently removed at the North's orders would be restored.

Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, has three main facilities: a 5-megawatt reactor, a plutonium reprocessing plant and a fuel fabrication complex.

The reactor is the centerpiece of the complex, with the facility stretching more than a mile along the Churyong River, satellite images show.

The reprocessing center to the south of the reactor is capable of extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods.

Up to late last week, the North had threatened to reactivate the plutonium reprocessing plant. It told International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to remove the organization's seals and subsequently banned them from monitoring first the plant and then all the facilities at the complex. It also stopped deactivating the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.