Text of North Korean letter to IAEA

BBC, Friday, 27 December, 2002

The "full text" of a letter sent by Yi Che-son, director of the North Korean General Department of Atomic Energy, to notify IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei of the decision to expel the IAEA inspectors staying in North Korea was reported by Reuters news agency. It reads:

"I am writing to inform you of the follow-up steps, now that the freeze on our nuclear facilities has been released, as was notified to you through my letter of December 14.

As was already informed, the government of the DPRK has made a decision to release the freeze of the nuclear facilities that the DPRK has frozen under the DPRK-USA Agreed Framework premised on annual delivery of 500,000 metric tons of HFO, and immediately resume the operation and construction of the nuclear facilities needed for generating electricity as a counter-measure to the substantial breakdown of the Agreed Framework by the US with the halt of the HFO delivery, followed by its designation of the DPRK as the "axis of evil" and the target for the "nuclear pre-emptive strike".

Accordingly, we will resume once-suspended construction of the atomic energy power plants and will embark on preparation to operate the radiochemical laboratory as a preparatory step to secure safe storage of [a] large quantity of spent-fuel rods that would come out once these power plants are in operation.

It is for this sake that we will soon be prepared for the operation of the radiochemical laboratory.

I believe, with the releasing of the freeze on our nuclear facilities, the mission of the IAEA inspectors in Nyongbyon to monitor the freeze of the nuclear facilities under the DPRK-USA Agreed Framework, has now automatically come to its end.

According to paragraph 3, article 1 of the DPRK-USA Agreed Framework, the DPRK is to allow the IAEA to monitor the freeze on graphite moderate reactors and related facilities during the period of their freeze and renders cooperation to the agency for that purpose.

I think you are fully aware of this.

Therefore, the residing of the inspectors in our country under these circumstances goes against the above article of the DPRK-USA Agreed Framework.

I hereby inform you of the decision of the government of the DPRK to let the inspectors leave the DPRK since there is no justification for them to remain here and ask you to take necessary steps immediately."

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