VIENNA (AFP) - The UN atomic energy agency cited South Korea for conducting secret nuclear experiments that violated international nuclear safeguards on a wider scale than Seoul had previously declared.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said South Korea had cooperated with the agency in investigating the matter, in a report released Thursday.
South Korea had already in August reported secret experiments in separating plutonium in the 1980s and in enriching uranium in 2000 but the IAEA report also said South Korean scientists had made natural uranium metal which is used in enriching uranium and conducted some chemical experiments in 1979 to enrich uranium.
South Korea claims these were small laboratory experiments done without government approval, and that such activity has been stopped.
"They haven't told us things they should have" but since then "they have provided a lot of good cooperation," a diplomat close to the IAEA said.
He said the activities were "a matter of serious concern," a statement IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had made in September to the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors.
But "there is no indication that these undeclared experiments have continued," the diplomat said.
The IAEA report could still clear the way to the agency bringing South Korea before the UN Security Council for the lapses when the IAEA's board of governors meets in Vienna on November 25.
This could prove embarrassing to South Korea's main ally the United States, which is leading a drive to get North Korea to give up plans to make nuclear weapons.
But the report says the IAEA investigation is continuing and this could lead IAEA board members to put off ruling on the South Korean case.
North Korea, citing concern about Seoul's secret nuclear experiments and "hostile" US policy, boycotted in October a planned new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the communist state's atomic weapons drive.
But US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in October that there was no comparison with secret nuclear experiments carried out by South Korea in the past and the ongoing atomic programs in North Korea and Iran.
11/11/2004 - 18:12 GMT - AFP