Seals of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been taken off North Korea's nuclear facilities, a diplomat said Monday, following the announcement that the country wanted to resume work at its reprocessing plant.
"This morning, the DPRK authorities asked the agency's inspectors to remove seals and surveillance equipment to enable them to carry out tests at the reprocessing plant, which they say will not involve nuclear material," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday, using North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
A Western diplomat told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the work of removing seals had started already at Yongbyon, North Korea's nuclear complex.
A North Korean official announced last Friday that his country was working to restart its nuclear facilities, which include a reactor for making plutonium, a plant for producing nuclear fuel for the reactor, and the reprocessing facility to process the plutonium.
However, North Korea's statement "has not changed the shutdown status of the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon," ElBaradei said.
The IAEA has installed seals and cameras to monitor the nuclear freeze that North Korea agreed to with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, in exchange for energy aid and an easing of sanctions.
It remained to be seen if North Korea's announcement was more than posturing in an effort to get off the United States' list of countries supporting terrorism, a diplomat close to the IAEA said. "The real test will be whether they throw the inspectors out," he said.
Washington does not want to remove Pyonyang from its terror list unless North Korea agrees to a verification protocol for its nuclear programme.
The secluded communist country has kicked IAEA inspectors out already once in 2002. They had been in Yongbyon to monitor an earlier freeze of nuclear facilities signed between the US and North Korea in 1994.
North Korea conducted a nuclear weapons test in 2006 and reached an agreement on stopping its nuclear programme last year.
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