The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said today he would visit North Korea after receiving an invitation from the government there to discuss the freeze of North Korean nuclear facilities.
"According to the letter, they would like to improve and normalise the relationship with the agency and hope to go back to being a member of the agency," Mohamed ElBaradei said in Vienna after meeting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Visitors walk past a Chinese-made Hongqi-2 missile in Beijing. Earlier tody US vice president Dick Cheney expressed concerns about China's military build-up and also questioned whether North Korea would follow through on its commitments in a recent nuclear deal.
North Korea agreed on February 13th to take steps towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300 million in aid under a deal President Bush hailed as the best chance to get it to scrap its atomic weapons programme.
The landmark agreement, reached four months after Pyongyang stunned the world with its first nuclear test, requires the communist state to shut down the reactor at the heart of its nuclear ambitions and allow international inspections.
The accord also calls for concessions by the United States towards economically impoverished North Korea which Mr Bush once lumped together with Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil".
A top South Korean nuclear envoy said earlier today North Korea appeared ready to abandon the source of its weapons-grade plutonium, but there was a still a long way to go before Pyongyang scraps its entire nuclear arms programme.
Seoul's chief envoy to six-way talks said that under the deal reached in Beijing, the faster and farther North Korea went toward shutting down its sole operating nuclear reactor and reprocessing facilities, the more aid it would receive.