North Korea expels nuclear inspectors

A three-man team from the United Nations nuclear agency that had been in North Korea arrived in Beijing today, but declined to comment on Pyongyang's atomic programme. One of the men, who would only give his first name of Mikhail, said he was part of the three person team with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that had flown out of the North Korean capital this morning. Speaking to reporters at Beijing airport, he said he had not been ordered out of North Korea but declined to make any other comment.

"I did not leave the country because they expelled me," he said, while the two men accompanying him quickly left without speaking to the press. US and UN nuclear monitors were due to leave North Korea today after the communist state ordered them out and announced plans to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium, a diplomat close to the IAEA said yesterday. The IAEA inspectors had switched off surveillance cameras and removed their equipment from the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the diplomat said.

The complex produced enough plutonium for a 2006 nuclear test and for several other bombs until it was shut down in 2007 under a six-nation disarmament deal. On Tuesday, North Korea walked out of the deal and said it would restart its nuclear weapons programmes in protest at UN condemnation of its April 5 rocket launch. *AFP