Unusual nuclear contamination found in N.Korea - U.N.

Unusual nuclear contamination found in N.Korea - U.N.
Thu Aug 2, 2007 1:50AM IST

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. monitors said on Wednesday they found higher than normal radioactive contamination at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, causing an initial delay in verifying its shutdown, but the problem was now resolved.
They were speaking after returning to Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, following a weekend handover with a replacement IAEA team that will keep watching over Yongbyon while five powers seek deals with North Korea on steps to advance its promised nuclear disarmament.
The first group of monitors said in Beijing on Tuesday after exiting North Korea that Pyongyang had cooperated fully with their mission, allowing them to verify that Yongbyon, which produces bomb-grade plutonium fuel, had been shut down.
"At the very beginning when we started the work (on July 14), the (radioactive) contamination was a bit higher than expected..., a bit more than normal," Adel Tolba, head of the first monitoring group, said at Vienna airport on Wednesday.
"(So) there was a delay. It took a little time for us ... until we cleaned everything up. But now everything is fixed," he told reporters.
He said the installation of cameras and other surveillance equipment at Yongbyon was now back on schedule, denying reports there would be a two-week delay beyond the month IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei said it would take to carry out the task.
Tolba could not say why the radioactivity had been higher than normal. Yongbyon's 5-megawatt reactor and its spent fuel reprocessing plant are based on an antiquated Soviet design.
"This is only a radiation and safety issue, not one of non-proliferation (of nuclear weapons)," said a senior Vienna diplomat familiar with IAEA operations in North Korea.
Tolba declined comment on the state of Pyongyang's nuclear facilities. Such weighty issues are left to ElBaradei who will issue a report on the shutdown to the agency's 35-nation Board of Governors before its next meeting in September.
North Korea closed Yongbyon to uphold its side of a deal thrashed out by six countries which in return promised energy aid to the impoverished Stalinist state. The six are the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
North Korea threw out IAEA inspectors in 2002 after a 1994 disarmament deal collapsed. Pyongyang's first nuclear test explosion last October stirred global alarm which rekindled negotiations leading to the disarmament accord in February.
Next week, officials will start ironing out technical details of the next steps to end North Korea's atomic bomb project, meeting on the fortified border between the North and South Korea, the chief U.S. negotiator said on Wednesday.
Christopher Hill, speaking at an East Asian security meeting in Manila, said he hoped the six parties would be able to get through all denuclearisation stages next year, although he called that timetable "ambitious".
(Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Manila)

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