IAEA says invited to visit DPRK

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday that it has received an invitation from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for a visit.

The UN nuclear watchdog received the invitation on Friday, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said in a statement, but declined to elaborate.

“We will discuss with the DPRK and other parties concerned for the details of the visit,” Tudor said. “Details will be discussed. Nothing has been decided yet.”

If made, the visit would be the first of its kind since the DPRK suspended its cooperation with the IAEA and withdrew from the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament in 2009.

Late last month, the DPRK said it would suspend nuclear tests, long-range missile launches and uranium enrichment activities as part of an agreement reached with the United States.

In addition, Pyongyang agreed to allow UN inspectors to return to the country and “verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment activities at Nyongbyon and confirm the disablement of the 5-MW reactor and associated facilities.”

In return, the United States agreed to provide the DPRK with 240,000 tons of nutritional assistance.

However, Pyongyang’s announcement, also made on Friday, of a plan to launch an “earth observation” satellite in April to mark the 100th birthday of its late leader Kim Il Sung has drawn widespread international concern. The United States warns that the bilateral deal has been put at risk.

The DPRK denies that its planned satellite launch would breach the agreement, saying: “The launch of the working satellite is an issue fundamentally different from that of a long-range missile.”

Ri Yong-Ho, the DPRK’s vice foreign minister and chief negotiator to the six-party talks, said late Monday in Beijing that his country would implement its deal with the United States in full.

He also said if others were practicing double standards or inappropriately interfered with the DPRK’s sovereign rights, Pyongyang would be forced to react to it.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the DPRK’s invitation to the IAEA “positive,” saying: “Obviously there’s benefit for any access that the IAEA can get.”

She also said Washington still believed that the satellite launch plan was in violation of the DPRK’s UN obligations and commitments under a U.S.-DPRK agreement late last month.

The DPRK is under tough UN sanctions that were further tightened because of a similar rocket launch on April 5, 2009. That launch, according to the country’s official KCNA news agency, put a “Kwangmyongsong-2” communications satellite into orbit. But some countries, including South Korea, Russia and the United States, believed the launch was a failure.

In late 2010, the New York Times reported that Pyongyang showed U.S. nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, who traveled to the DPRK, a vast, new plant to enrich uranium with ” hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges installed.

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