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A top U.N. nuclear inspector confirmed Saturday North Korea and his agency have agreed on how the nuclear facilities in the communist state will be shut down and monitored in line with the six-party agreement.

"We have now reached an understanding on how we are going to monitor the sealing and shutting down of the Yongbyon nuclear facility," Olli Heinonen, deputy director of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters in Beijing.

Heinonen had just ended a five-day trip to the communist state with three other IAEA members, carried out under a landmark February deal that calls for North Korea's nuclear dismantlement in return for economic and political concessions.

During the visit, Heinonen visited North Korea's one and only nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, marking the first trip by officials of the U.N. nuclear watchdog since inspectors were expelled from the communist country in 2002.

On Friday, Heinonen said North Korea and the IAEA have agreed on the methods that would be used in monitoring the shutdown of the nuclear facilities.

"We have concluded this understanding, what our monitoring and verification activities are in principle,'' Heinonen said on Associated Press Television News.

But he did not disclose the timeline for the shutdown, only saying the six-party talks -- involving North Korea, South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- would be tasked with the matter.

"This is for the six parties to decide," he said. "You have to ask them the time scale."

BEIJING, June 30 (Yonhap News)