UN Nuclear Inspectors Arrive in North Korea to Supervise Shutdown of Key Atomic Reactor – North Korea Says It Has Shut Nuclear Reactor Down

About Photo: The IAEA team checks in at the Vienna airport under the media glare.
(Photo by K. Nikolic/IAEA)

UN inspectors arrived Saturday in Pyongyang to supervise the start of North Korea's nuclear disarmament with the shutdown of a key atomic reactor, Chinese state news media said... The 10-member team is to monitor and verify the shutdown of the main Yongbyon reactor some 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Pyongyang, the Xinhua news agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang... The UN inspection, the first since 2002, comes amid hopes that years of delicate international negotiations could finally get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program...
Read the rest at Bernama.com

FoxNews.com is reporting... North Korea told the United States it shut down its nuclear reactor, the State Department said Saturday, hours after a ship cruised into port loaded with oil promised in return for the country's pledge to disarm.... If confirmed by a U.N. inspection team headed to the Yongbyon reactor, the shutdown would be the North's first step in nearly five years toward de-nuclearization....
Read the rest at link below...
North Korea: We Have Shut Down Nuclear Reactor

GOOD NEWS!!! If this new info holds to be true...
AubreyJ.........

********************

UPDATE: 1:25pm CDT

.
DOS Press Statement

Sean McCormack, Spokesman

Washington, DC

July 14, 2007

.

North Korea -- Shutdown of Yongbyon Facilities

.

The U.S. has been informed Saturday that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team that has arrived in the DPRK.

We, along with all our other Six-Party partners, remain firmly committed to achieving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through the implementation of the September 2005 Joint Statement. With the Six-Party Talks negotiators set to meet July 18 in Beijing, we look forward to working with all parties to make rapid progress in implementing the next phase set forth in theFebruary 13 agreement on initial actions, in which the DPRK has committed todeclaring all its nuclear programs and disabling all its existing nuclear facilities.
2007/587