The United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency was given access today to North Korea's plutonium- producing plant at Yongbyon, a reaction to the U.S. decision to remove the nation from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.
"Inspectors will also now be permitted to re-apply the containment and surveillance measures at the reprocessing facility,'' the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement. North Korea said "core discharge activities'' at the reactor would resume tomorrow, with UN monitoring, the agency said.
North Korea had informed the IAEA on Oct. 9 that access to Yongbyon would be denied.
The reopening of Yongbyon to inspectors and the removal of North Korea from the terrorism list followed a visit by U.S. envoys to Pyongyang on Oct. 1-3 and breaks a two-month deadlock in the nuclear negotiations by the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.
North Korea welcomed the U.S. decision, the state-run Korea Central News Agency said yesterday, citing a foreign-ministry spokesman it didn't identify.
North Korea landed on the U.S. terrorism list 20 years ago after its agents were implicated in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner. The designation resulted in sanctions, including curbs on aid and a ban on sales of weapons. The State Department says North Korea isn't known to have committed an act of terrorism since then.
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