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A three-nation survey team successfully toured a North Korean reactor and will gain access to other key nuclear sites, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

The nine-member delegation, including seven American officials and nuclear experts, on Wednesday viewed the 5-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the site of North Korea's suspected atomic weapons program, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

The delegation is scheduled to view two other facilities at the site on Thursday, he said.

The U.S. officials, led by Sung Kim, director of the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, were joined in Pyongyang by one expert each from China and Russia to view the nuclear facilities and discuss their disablement.

"They saw everything they asked to see," McCormack said of Wednesday's tour.

The countries represented are the three nuclear states participating in the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas and Japan are the other members of the talks.

In addition to the reactor, Yongbyon houses a fuel fabrication plant and a reprocessing facility, which the delegation will tour on Thursday. These installations are believed to have produced enough plutonium for up to half a dozen nuclear weapons.

Under a deal struck in February, North Korea shut down the facilities. Negotiators are now working on the second phase of the deal, which requires Pyongyang to disable them and declare in full its nuclear stockpile. The U.S. and others hope to complete this phase within year in order to move on to broader talks of diplomatic normalizations and regional peace in 2008.

McCormack said the delegation will sit down with North Korean officials on Friday to discuss "some of their initial impressions about what they saw, and how you might go about actually disabling the reactor."

The survey precedes the six-party meeting expected next week in Beijing, where negotiators will get a full report from the delegation and formulate a road map for the next actions to be taken by each party.

The delegation "will provide substantial input," McCormack said.

The spokesman evaded direct comments on the latest report that North Korea may have sold nuclear material to Syria, a proliferation concern that the U.S. often cites against Pyongyang.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Israeli reconnaissance photographs turned up possible nuclear installations in Syria, and Israeli officials believe they might have been supplied with materials from North Korea.

"In as much as there is public discussion about North Korea and its activities around the world ... what we have to say on that is already in the public domain," McCormack said.


WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (Yonhap)