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Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed El Baradei on Monday urged the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to honor its promise not to make nuclear weapons.
At a meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna, capital of Austria, El Baradei said the DPRK should honor the nuclear agreement in order to end the present "unsustainable situation", describing it as "a dangerous precedent."
He said that the IAEA was "regrettably at present unable ... to verify that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not diverting nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices."
El Baradei expressed hope that the DPRK will "understand that it is compliance rather than defiance that will open the way to a dialogue to address its security and other concerns."
He also showed his satisfaction with a draft resolution that the IAEA's board of governors was due to approve on Monday evening, giving the DPRK "another opportunity to come into compliance".
The DPRK decided on Dec. 12 to unfreeze its nuclear program after the United States suspended the supply of heavy fuel oil. It then removed the surveillance devices of the IAEA from its nuclear facilities.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the DPRK should freeze its graphite-moderated reactors in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of heavy oil a year from the United States.
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2002)
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