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 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea sent a shipload of oil to North Korea on Thursday, a move expected to trigger the communist nation to shut down its only working nuclear reactor in a landmark first step toward dismantling its atomic bomb program.
The chief U.N. inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he expects the agency's monitoring of the shutdown of the North's Yongbyon reactor will start "early next week" and the initial inspection is expected to be completed "within a maybe month or so."
"I expect that operation to move smoothly," ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Seoul of the visit by inspectors to North Korea expected to begin Saturday. "I am quite optimistic that this is a good step in the right direction."
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