KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - UN inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down four more nuclear facilities beyond its sole working reactor, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog agency said Wednesday July 18th.
"We have verified all the five nuclear facilities have been shut down," said Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"Appropriate measures have been put in place, including sealing some of these facilities," ElBaradei told reporters during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"We expect that in the next few weeks, we will continue to apply the necessary monitoring and verification measures."
On Monday, ElBaradei announced that his team of inspectors had verified the shutdown of North Korea's only working nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Pyongyang.
The four additional facilities include two long-dormant construction sites for larger reactors, and facilities for making reactor fuel and reprocessing it.
ElBaradei said the shutdown of the five facilities was "a very good, positive step, but it's (the) very first step in a long road to travel."
"Obviously we will have to go beyond Yongbyon if we want to verify that all nuclear material, all nuclear activities in (North Korea) have been declared," he said. "That obviously means we might have to go to different places, that we might have to ask a variety of a questions, we might have to inspect different facilities."
ElBaradei expressed hopes that North Korea would declare its inventory of all nuclear facilities and material "as early as possible," but he said he could not tell whether Pyongyang's declaration and nuclear disablement could be completed by the end of the year, which Washington hopes.
"A lot of it depends on progress in the six-party talks," he said, referring to negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, the US and the two Koreas, whose delegates gathered Wednesday in Beijing to chart steps ahead for North Korea's disarmament.
"What is really important is full transparency by (North Korea)," ElBaradei said. "The more transparency we get, the quicker we will be able to verify that everything in (North Korea) has been declared to us."
