The ship is carrying 6,200 metric tons of fuel, the first batch of a total of 50,000 metric tons South Korea pledged to supply to its impoverished neighbor at six-nation talks in February. It will reach North Korea Saturday, when UN inspectors arrive to monitor the shutdown of its only operating reactor and the source of its weapons-grade plutonium.
The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog said Thursday he expected the experts' work to verify the closure of key nuclear facilities would go smoothly, Yonhap reported.
"I expect [this] to move smoothly because we already have an agreement on how to go about it," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said adding the process was "not complicated."
He said the inspectors would "make sure there's enough monitoring equipment to ensure that at all times we can verify and provide assurances on the shutdown of the facilities."
At talks with South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, North Korea promised to close and seal its Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor in exchange for 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil as the first phase of its nuclear disarmament.
The second phase includes Pyongyang providing information on all its nuclear programs, including a suspected uranium enrichment program, to the IAEA, for a further 950,000 metric tons of fuel for its thermal power plants to be supplied by the United States, China and Russia, as well as other economic and diplomatic incentives.
North Korea pulled out from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003 and conducted its first nuclear bomb test last October.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday the six-party talks would take place in Beijing July 18, confirming earlier reports on the date by the South Korean foreign minister and other sources.
The top U.S. negotiator at the six-nation talks, Christopher Hill, said in an interview with the NHK channel, Japan's public broadcaster, earlier Thursday that a plan on additional steps toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula could be worked out at a meeting in Beijing
Hill said he hoped Pyongyang would agree to close all its nuclear facilities within a year. He also said Washington and Pyongyang could hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the six-party negotiations.
