N.Korea to resume disabling atom reactor Tuesday: IAEA

VIENNA (Reuters) - North Korea will resume disabling the reactor at its plutonium-making nuclear complex on Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.

An IAEA statement confirmed diplomatic reports earlier in the day that North Korea had restored access for IAEA monitors to Yongbyon. Pyongyang had pledged on Sunday to resume steps to eliminate its atomic bomb program in a deal with Washington. Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said North Korea had reinstated IAEA monitoring of the 5 megawatt reactor, the nuclear fuel fabrication facility and a reprocessing plant that had producing weapons-grade plutonium.

"Agency inspectors were also informed today that, as of tomorrow, 14 October, core discharge activities at the reactor would be resumed, monitored by Agency inspectors," she said.

"(Our) inspectors will also now be permitted to re-apply containment and surveillance measures at the reprocessing facility," Fleming said in the statement.

North Korea had barred the 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.

The U.S. State Department announced on Saturday that it had delisted the Stalinist state after Pyongyang agreed to a series of verification steps.

Fleming said the IAEA had not yet been briefed on details of the verification measures agreed by Washington and Pyongyang and hoped this would happen once all six nations party to the process -- the others are South Korea, Japan, China and Russia -- had met to finalize the deal.

(Reporting by Mark Heinrich; editing by Sami Aboudi)