IAEA Set to Penalize North Korea

VIENNA -- The International Atomic Energy Agency was poised Thursday to impose the first penalty on North Korea, suspected of secretly building nuclear bombs.A draft resolution sponsored by 18 of the 35 member countries on the IAEA's executive board of governors called for immediate suspension of technical aid.It also said the agency should inform the UN Security Council that North Korea, by recent actions, had widened its non-compliance with agreements banning the spread of nuclear weapons.The draft, obtained by Reuters, was backed by four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Russia, the United States, Britain, France -- as well as Japan.China, also a member of the executive board and the fifth permanent Security Council nation, is North Korea's closest ally and opposes U.S. and South Korean calls for a UN embargo.The draft was to be submitted for approval by the board on Friday.Pyongyang meanwhile threatened to punish Japan if it supported proposed international sanctions to hurt the Stalinist state's fragile economy.The North Korean Foreign Ministry said Japan could be sure of reprisals if it joined in sanctions.The United States began discussing sanctions with other UN Security Council members after UN inspectors were barred from testing spent fuel at a nuclear reactor in North Korea to see if any had been diverted for a bomb.An IAEA source said North Korea received about a quarter of a million dollar's worth of technical aid and support for its civil nuclear program each year, as do other developing countries in the 120-member agency.The resolution specified that medical aid, including scanning equipment, should not be stopped.The resolution rejected North Korea's claim of "unique status" under the Nonproliferation Treaty and its associated safeguards agreement, which authorize regular IAEA inspections.North Korea "is continuing to widen its non-compliance with its safeguards agreement by taking actions that prevent the agency from verifying the history of the reactor core and from ascertaining whether nuclear material from the reactor had been diverted in past years." the draft said.It called on Pyongyang once again to cooperate fully by providing access and information to IAEA inspectors.By refusing to allow IAEA inspectors to select and sample fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in a refueling process begun last month, North Korea had destroyed the "limited opportunity" for verification that existed."The agency's ability to ascertain, with sufficient confidence, whether nuclear material from the reactor had been diverted in the past had also been lost," the draft added. North Korea unilaterally announced its withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty in March last year but suspended that decision. It now claims "unique status", which it says allows it to decide whether or not to accept IAEA inspections.The draft said North Korea "remains a party to the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and is therefore bound by its safeguards obligations."