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The chief U.N. nuclear inspector said Friday he has been invited to visit North Korea and hopes to discuss implementing last week's denuclearization agreement with Pyongyang officials.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is likely to travel to North Korea in the second week of March, following the agency's board of governors meeting in Vienna March 5-9, according to an IAEA spokesman.

ElBaradei said he and Pyongyang officials would discuss how to implement the freezing of nuclear facilities and their eventual dismantlement.

In an agreement reached in Beijing on Feb. 13, North Korea would shut down and seal its primary reactor within 60 days and allow international inspectors to monitor the process. In return, South Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, other members of the so-called six-party process, would provide energy and other types of assistance.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, currently visiting Austria, said he hopes the IAEA chief's visit will translate into concrete denuclearization steps on the Korean Peninsula.

IAEA officials are said to have been preparing to resume inspections in North Korea, contacting Pyongyang's diplomats frequently. Agency sources said the inspectors would be able to go into the North within days once Pyongyang allows their entry.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog had been in North Korea from 1994 to early 2003, monitoring the Yongbyon reactor that is believed to be the main facility producing weapons-grade plutonium. The inspectors were expelled after North Korea, accused by the U.S. of running a clandestine nuclear weapons program, unilaterally declared the restart of the reactor and tore off the seals.

North Korea also withdrew from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty in January 2003.

Berlin, Feb. 23 (Yonhap News)