U.N. leaves plutonium site on North Korean orders

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors turned off surveillance cameras and left the site of North Korea's nuclear bomb program on Pyongyang's demand on Wednesday, a diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's four-person team in North Korea was likely to leave the country on Thursday, he said, two days after Pyongyang ordered their expulsion in a furious response to a U.N. condemnation of its launching of a long-range rocket.

The reclusive Stalinist state said it was ditching six-party talks on completing a nuclear disarmament process agreed in 2007 and would reactivate a plant in its Yongbyon nuclear complex that produces plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. State Department said Pyongyang had told a separate U.S. team that had been observing the Yongbyon shutdown to get out of the country as well, and they were preparing to go. "This is a step backwards," spokesman Robert Wood told reporters.

The diplomat, familiar with the Vienna-based IAEA's North Korea operations, said U.N. inspectors had ceased all duties monitoring Yongbyon's shutdown, removed agency seals on equipment there and turned cameras to face walls.

REPRISE OF 2002 EXPULSION

"They are now out of Yongbyon, still in Pyongyang but preparing to leave, probably tomorrow. It is essentially a replay of 2002," he said.

North Korea re-admitted IAEA non-proliferation monitors in 2007 to verify its dismantling of Yongbyon under a six-party disarmament accord, 4-1/2 years after expelling them over U.S. accusations that it had a secret uranium-enrichment program.