IAEA ready to send inspectors to N. Korea if accord reached: Amano+

TOKYO, Dec. 17 Kyodo -
Yukiya Amano, visiting chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said
Friday that the nuclear watchdog is ready to send its inspectors to North Korea
again if Pyongyang accepts that.
''We are ready to send our inspectors to North Korea once an agreement is
worked out,'' said the IAEA director general. ''Up to April 2009, we had our
staff to monitor their activities in Yongbyon. So, I don't know when, but why
not in the future?''
Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara has urged Pyongyang to allow back IAEA
inspectors for the reopening the six-party talks on denuclearizing the Korean
Peninsula, which has been requested by the North and the chair China.
Sparking further worries about its renewed nuclear ambitions, North Korea
recently showed a group of U.S. nuclear experts hundreds of centrifuges
installed and running at a secret uranium enrichment plant in Yongbyon, about
90 kilometers north of Pyongyang.
The uranium enrichment program is a potential second route to making nuclear
bombs, in addition to its plutonium-based program.
Amano told a luncheon of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo
that he learned ''with great concern'' of the uranium enrichment and the newly
confirmed construction of a light-water reactor in North Korea.
Since the North expelled IAEA inspectors and ceased all cooperation with the
agency in April last year, there have been no official or unofficial contacts
between Pyongyang and the nuclear watchdog, Amano said.
''The involvement of the IAEA is indispensable because the IAEA is the only
multilateral verification organization,'' he said. ''I hope we will have an
essential role to play in the verification of North Korea's nuclear program.''
The six-way dialogue involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States
and Russia has been deadlocked since December 2008.
Later in the day, Amano met with Maehara at the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
==Kyodo