SEOUL, South Korea -- Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency have confirmed that North Korea has shut down its weapons-making nuclear reactor, the agency said yesterday.
But the communist North warned the United States that the real bargaining for its nuclear disarmament has just begun.
North Korea told the United States over the weekend that it had shut down the nuclear reactor and had readmitted a permanent international inspection team.
The confirmation of that claim yesterday by the International Atomic Energy Agency makes official a hard-won, yet fragile, diplomatic victory for the Bush administration.
It has granted the North Korean regime a series of financial and diplomatic concessions to make the much-delayed shutdown of the reactor possible.
Now comes the hard part, both officials and experts said, as six-nation talks are set to resume in Beijing tomorrow.
The talks will aim to persuade North Korea to start disabling the reactor, and to declare all of its other nuclear materials and facilities, which it has agreed to do in return for a million tons of heavy fuel oil and other economic and diplomatic incentives.
"I certainly have to anticipate there will be problems, because I never expected it would take until July to get this first step done," said the United States nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, referring to North Korea's original agreement to turn off the reactor by mid-April.
Hill spoke as the director general of the U.N. atomic agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said yesterday that his team of inspectors had visited the nuclear complex in Yongbyon and had verified that the reactor there was switched off.