DPRK rejects resolution to dismantle nuke programme

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, September 24, 2003

DPRK rejects resolution to dismantle nuke programme

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Iran remains willing to negotiate for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to enjoy unfettered access, but in the meantime it will scale back its co-operation with the UN watchdog, Iran's representative to the world body said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) rejected a resolution from the UN nuclear watchdog urging Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear programme and said it proved the organization was a US stooge.

"We have decided to fulfill our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and not beyond that," said Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's representative to IAEA.

"It doesn't mean that we are rejecting the additional protocol or not prepared to talk on that," Salehi added. The additional protocol would provide IAEA inspectors with unrestricted access to any site they wished to visit in Iran.

On Monday night, Salehi told Iranian state television that Iran had given the inspectors more rein than is required under the NPT. It would now scale back that co-operation, he said.

The move was Iran's response to the watchdog's demand that the country prove its nuclear programme is peaceful by October 31. The Teheran government has criticized the deadline resolution as unacceptable and "politically motivated."

After Salehi announced the decision to reduce co-operation, a Western diplomat said the move did not bode well.

"If Iran has decided to do only the minimum, it doesn't sound like the accelerated co-operation the IAEA had called on it to provide," the diplomat said on Monday.

But Salehi said yesterday such a conclusion was a wrong interpretation of his comments.

On the Korean front, the IAEA on Friday passed a Canadian-sponsored resolution repeating calls for the DPRK to abandon any nuclear weapons, rejoin the NPT and readmit IAEA inspectors.

"The DPRK can never recognize but declares invalid such unreasonable resolution," said the North's official KCNA news agency in an English-language report. "This resolution does not deserve even a passing note," the agency said.

The KCNA said the IAEA was acting as a henchman and spokesman for the United States.

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