U.N. monitors re-seal N.Korean nuclear equipment

North Korea readmitted IAEA monitors to its Yongbyon nuclear complex on Monday and pledged to restart measures to eliminate its atom bomb programme, after it struck a deal with the United States that defused rows over how to verify denuclearisation.

A diplomat familiar with International Atomic Energy Agency operations said IAEA monitors were putting seals back on equipment at Yongbyon's shutdown plutonium-producing plant and switching agency surveillance cameras back on. The monitors regained access to the reprocessing plant, the kernel of its atomic bomb programme, as well as a nuclear fuel-fabrication facility and 5 megawatt reactor.

Pyongyang halted dismantlement a few weeks ago in the escalating dispute with Washington but by then the facilities had been largely taken apart, to the point where it would take about a year to reverse the process.

North Korea had barred IAEA inspectors from Yongbyon last Thursday in anger over Washington's refusal to remove it from a sponsors-of-terrorism blacklist in a dispute over the extent of verification measures required for denuclearization.

Two days later, the U.S. State Department announced that it had delisted the reclusive Stalinist state after Pyongyang agreed to a series of verification steps.

North Korea, which shut down the Yongbyon complex almost a year ago and began dismantling it, agreed to access for experts to all declared nuclear facilities and, based on "mutual consent," undeclared sites.

The isolated, impoverished North was keen to get off the blacklist so it can draw on international financing for modernisation and be freed from trade sanctions.

(Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Charles Dick)