Reactor shut says N. Korea

North Korea confirmed it has shut its nuclear reactor that provides the secretive state with material to make weapons-grade plutonium, China's Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean official as saying yesterday.

North Korea told the United States it has shut down its Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor as part of a disarmament deal, the US State Department said on Saturday after a team of UN nuclear inspectors arrived in Pyongyang.

"We have shut down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon after we received the first shipment of heavy oil," the North's KCNA news agency cited one of its spokesman as saying, according to Xinhua's English news website.

In Washington, White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley said it appeared Yongbyon, which produces weapons-grade plutonium, had been shut down.

But in comments on Fox News Sunday television programme, he added: "We have concerns that they may have a covert (uranium) enrichment programme. That will be the next subject."

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

North Korea said last week it would consider suspending the operation of its nuclear facilities as soon as it received the first shipment of oil from South Korea under a February 13 aid-for-disarmament deal.

A South Korean tanker carrying 6,200 tonnes of fuel oil docked Saturday at a port in north-eastern North Korea.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that US negotiators looked forward to the next step of the February 13 agreement, in which Pyongyang "has committed to declaring all its nuclear programmes and disabling all its existing nuclear facilities."

Top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill gave the news a cautious welcome yesterday.

"This is just a first step," Mr Hill, who is visiting Japan, told Japanese media.

"This is only a meaningful step insofar as it will be followed by other steps."

Speaking of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency,, he said: "I think by the end of today, they will be able to give us reports on the five facilities."

South Korea's Foreign Ministry hailed Pyongyang's decision as an encouraging development.

"North Korea's measures to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and accept the IAEA inspectors are meaningful because it is the first step in implementing their denuclearisation agreement," a ministry statement said.

Word of the reactor shutdown came on the day the IAEA team reached Pyongyang.

The leader of the team had said earlier in Beijing they would go straight to Yongbyon on Saturday to begin work at the complex.

The team of 10 experts is the first to return to monitor the shutdown after a four-and-a-half-year absence.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has said it would take about a month to set up the monitoring equipment. "I am quite optimistic that this is a good step in the right direction," he said.

In his statement, Mr McCormack said: "We, along with all our other six-party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."

The six-party talks, where North Korea sits down with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, are due to resume on Wednesday to map out the next stage of the disarmament process.