UN Confirms all North Korean Nuclear Facilities Shut

BEIJING (AP) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed Wednesday that North Korea shuttered all remaining facilities at its main nuclear complex - in addition to its sole working reactor - as talks on the next steps in Pyongyang's disarmament convened in Beijing.

"We have verified all the five nuclear facilities have been shut down," Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Some of the facilities also have been sealed by U.N. inspectors, Mr. ElBaradei said.

Mr. ElBaradei announced earlier in the week that his team of inspectors had verified the shutdown of North Korea's only working nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

His announcement Wednesday confirmed the shutdown of four additional facilities, including two long-dormant construction sites for larger reactors, and facilities for making reactor fuel and reprocessing it to harvest plutonium for bombs.

The verification came as nuclear negotiators met Wednesday in Beijing to chart steps ahead for North Korea's nuclear disarmament, hoping to agree on a timeline for unprecedented moves beyond the shutdown.

Proceeding beyond the reactor's closure to finally end the North's ability to make nuclear weapons, including a declaration of all its facilities and then disabling them, is "a road that nobody has ever walked on," South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said.

All six countries last met in March, although the main American envoy Christopher Hill made a surprise trip to Pyongyang in June - his first ever - to urge the North to comply with its pledges.

After a preliminary series of one-on-one talks Tuesday between America and North Korea, Hill said no new obstacles had immediately emerged and that the sides were "in the same ballpark."

Looming as a hurdle is whether Pyongyang will publicly acknowledge the uranium enrichment program that America accused it of having in 2002 - sparking the nuclear crisis. The North's publicly known reactor at Yongbyon that produces plutonium had previously been shuttered under a 1994 disarmament deal with America but never disabled.

"Uranium enrichment is an ongoing issue and, believe me, we are working on it," Mr. Hill said Wednesday.

Mr. Hill said America would demand the North declare how much plutonium it has produced and how much it currently possesses. North Korea conducted its first-ever test nuclear explosion in October, but the detonation was believed to be relatively weak in power and it is not known how much plutonium was used.

Washington hopes that the declaration and disablement could be completed by the end of the year.

The IAEA's Mr. ElBaradei said that could only happen if there is progress in the six-nation talks and the North remains cooperative with inspectors, who may be required to travel across the secretive nation to other sites.

"What is really important is full transparency," Mr. 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."

South Korea's Mr. Chun said meeting the year-end deadline was "not a matter of whether it's technically possible or not."

"It depends on North Korea's political will and how sincerely the other countries take corresponding measures," he said. North Korea has begun receiving 50,000 tons of oil from South Korea as a reward for the reactor shutdown, and is to eventually receive the equivalent of a total 1 million tons for disabling its nuclear facilities.

But Pyongyang also has demanded the U.S. and Japan end their "hostile" policies against the regime, such as other economic sanctions and being named on an American list of terrorism-sponsoring states.

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Associated Press writers Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur and Mari Yamaguchi and Burt Herman in Beijing contributed to this report.