Inspectors to leave North Korea
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post
SEOUL, South Korea — United Nations nuclear inspectors in North Korea were confined to their guesthouse yesterday at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, and the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed that the group will leave the country by Tuesday in response to a government expulsion order.
Associated Press
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assailed North Korea as "a country in defiance of its international obligations," and charged it with establishing "a very dangerous precedent for the nonproliferation system." He said he would submit a report asserting that North Korea has violated its commitments under a 1994 deal with the United States that obligates it to submit to inspections.
About 10,000 North Koreans in Pyongyang shout anti-U.S. slogans during a rally calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula.
The IAEA's board would then consider how to respond at an emergency meeting scheduled for Jan. 6 in Vienna, ElBaradei said. He said that he would urge the board to demand that North Korea immediately allow the inspectors to resume surveillance at the reactor complex. Barring that, ElBaradei said, the IAEA would "have an obligation to refer the matter to the Security Council" — the course favored by the Bush administration. The Security Council could then warn North Korea or impose consequences including censure, economic sanctions or military force.
One of the three inspectors at Yongbyon, a Vietnamese woman, was expected to return home last night, the IAEA said. The other two, a Chinese woman and a Lebanese man, plan to leave North Korea Tuesday, on a weekly flight to Beijing.
Last weekend, North Korea began dismantling surveillance equipment at the once-shuttered Yongbyon reactor. On Friday, it announced plans to reopen its reprocessing plant, which is capable of extracting plutonium from spent fuel rods to make nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei said that some surveillance could be conducted by satellite, but that "there is no substitute for on-site inspection. As of tomorrow, we're clueless."
