N. Korea invites IAEA to monitor nuke deal

SEOUL: North Korea has invited UN inspectors to monitor a nuclear deal with the United States, insisting the pact remains in force despite its shock announcement of an upcoming satellite launch.

Next month’s planned launch, which will violate a United Nations resolution, has sparked widespread complaints that the communist state is testing long-range missile technology which could one day deliver a nuclear warhead.

Washington says any launch would breach the deal announced on Feb 29, which offered substantial US food aid for a partial nuclear freeze.

The North, which came under new leadership in December under the young and untested Kim Jong-un, insists otherwise.

“The satellite launch is one thing and the DPRK-US agreement is another,” its chief nuclear negotiator Ri Yong-ho said late Monday in Beijing, using the North’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The North would implement its deal with the United States in full, he told reporters, according to video footage aired yesterday by South Korea’s KBS television.

“In order to implement the agreement, we’ve sent a letter of invitation to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to send inspectors to our country.”

The deal raised modest hopes of progress in decades-long efforts to curb the North’s nuclear weapons drive.

It agreed last month to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, along with long-range missile launches and nuclear tests, in return for 240,000 tonnes of US food. It also promised to readmit IAEA inspectors expelled three years ago.

The North insists it is a peaceful satellite launch, not a missile test.

But the United States, Japan, Russia and other nations have called for it to scrap the plan, and even close ally China has expressed concern. — AFP