ElBaradei Wants N.Korea Back In Anti-Nuclear Pact

North Korea tested a nuclear device in 2006.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said on Monday that he hoped North Korea would soon return to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, from which it withdrew five years ago.

Earlier this month inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed to re-seal equipment and reactivate monitoring cameras at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex after the United States struck a deal with Pyongyang to re-launch a faltering disarmament process.

North Korea tested a nuclear device in 2006.

Disarmament experts say that with North Korea outside the verification process associated with the NPT, which is aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and eradicating the world's atomic arsenals, the IAEA has little hope of ensuring that North Korea does not revive its weapons program.

In his annual report to the 192 U.N. member states, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency made clear that he, too, wants North Korea back in the 1968 treaty.

"I naturally still hope that conditions can be created for the DPRK (North Korea) to return to the NPT soon and for the resumption by the Agency of comprehensive safeguards," ElBaradei told the U.N. General Assembly.

North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003 after expelling all IAEA inspectors from the country. The Vienna-based agency's small crew of inspectors had been there to verify Pyongyang's compliance with a 1994 deal with the United States that required North Korea to mothball the Yongbyon reactor.

The 1994 agreement fell apart in 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of running a clandestine uranium enrichment program outside the Yongbyon plant, a research reactor that was capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The latest disarmament deal, under which Pyongyang has agreed to continue dismantling Yongbyon, was the result of years of so-called six-party talks with North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.