South Korea will start shipping oil to North Korea next week, an official said on Wednesday, a day after UN nuclear inspectors said the reclusive state had agreed to steps verifying a shutdown of its atom bomb programme.
Under a disarmament-for-aid pact reached in six-country talks in February, impoverished North Korea pledged to start closing its Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor in exchange for 50,000 tonnes of heavy oil from its neighbour. Implementation of the deal was held up for months because of a stand-off over North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank.
"The first shipment will start next week and the initial amount will be between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes," a South Korean Unification Ministry official said. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday Pyongyang wanted some of the oil before starting to close Yongbyon, and Washington was not opposed to such a shipment. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which sent officials to North Korea last week, said Pyongyang had agreed to measures to verify a shutdown of the sprawling Yongbyon complex. But they said a date had not yet been set to start closing down the secretive state's source of weapons-grade plutonium.
The UN watchdog said the six countries in the talks the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States must settle on a shutdown target date before it sends inspectors.
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