U.N. monitors re-seal N.Korean nuclear equipment

I know it's a few days late but here we go again! As usual things like this always sound encouraging ! But givin the track record of North Korea We should remain Optimistic ! I'm almost willing to take a bet on this one ,that after they get what they want for awhile they will go back to their old ways!

VIENNA (Reuters) - Monitors re-sealed equipment and reactivated cameras at North Korea's nuclear complex on Tuesday, diplomats close to the U.N. atomic watchdog said, after a deal to re-launch a faltering disarmament process.

North Korea readmitted IAEA monitors to its Yongbyon nuclear complex on Monday and pledged to restart measures to eliminate its atom bomb program, after it struck a deal with the United States that defused rows over how to verify denuclearization.

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A diplomat familiar with International Atomic Energy Agency operations said IAEA monitors were putting seals back on equipment at Yongbyon's shutdown plutonium-producing plant and switching agency surveillance cameras back on.

The monitors regained access to the reprocessing plant, the kernel of its atomic bomb program, as well as a nuclear fuel-fabrication facility and 5 megawatt reactor.

Pyongyang halted dismantlement a few weeks ago in the escalating dispute with Washington but by then the facilities had been largely taken apart, to the point where it would take about a year to reverse the process.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said North Korea had started reversing its steps to restart Yongbyon.

"I understand that the IAEA has resumed its work. It has started to reapply seals," he told reporters.

"I think, as simply put, the North Koreans have started the reversal of their reversal, so they're getting back to that baseline where they were very close to meeting their obligations under the second phase that we're in, in terms of disablement" of North Korea's nuclear complex, he said.

North Korea had barred IAEA inspectors from Yongbyon last Thursday in anger over Washington's refusal to remove it from a sponsors-of-terrorism blacklist in a dispute over the extent of verification measures required for denuclearization.
Two days later, the U.S. State Department announced that it had delisted the reclusive Stalinist state after Pyongyang agreed to a series of verification steps.

McCormack said senior officials from North Korea and the other five countries assisting Pyongyang's disarmament process hoped to meet soon to formalize the set of verification steps, but he said there was no date set yet. The other five countries are the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia.

North Korea, which shut down the Yongbyon complex almost a year ago and began dismantling it, agreed to access for experts to all declared nuclear facilities and, based on "mutual consent," undeclared sites.

The isolated, impoverished North was keen to get off the blacklist so it can draw on international financing for modernization and be freed from trade sanctions.