960422

Inspection team

to

visit N Korean

reactor site

SEOUL: A fifth site-survey team will visit North Korea this week in anticipation that ground work for two new US-pledged nuclear reactors can start in June, consortium officials said here on Monday.

The 10-man team, from the US-led Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) consortium, will enter the communist North via Beijing on Thursday, Yonhap news agency quoted a KEDO official as saying.

The team will spend 10 days in the coastal Sinpo area working on basic design and infrastructure plans, including an eight kilometer (five mile) road from the port to the reactor site and living quarters, he said.

"We expect that basic work on infrastructure will begin as early as June if work proceeds at the the current pace," the official added.

The team will be the fifth to work on site since Pyongyang signed a landmark nuclear accord with Washington in 1994, under which it froze its suspect nuclear weapons programme in return for the light water reactors (LWRs) and improved ties with the United States.

It will be made up mainly of technicans from the South's Korea Electric Power Corp., (KEPCO), a prime contractor in the project whose estimated 4.5 billion dollar cost is to be borne largely by South Korea.

KEDO, composed of the United States, Japan and South Korea, has so far failed in its bid to pursuade North Korea to allow material for the construction of the two LWR's travel overland from the South.

As a result the first site survey equipment has been sent by ship.-AFP