Regular Inspections Demanded

Two powerful U.S. senators said Saturday that Washington will not accept a onetime inspection of North Korea’s declared nuclear facilities and will instead demand access to suspect sites and even waste and disposal areas.

Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn and Indiana Republican Richard G. Lugar, both experts on the North Korean situation, cautioned against overoptimism in the tense dispute over nuclear inspection.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Lynn Davis had raised hopes that the inspection dispute was near a settlement when he said in Washington on Wednesday that North Korea had agreed in negotiations with the United States to allow inspections of seven declared nuclear sites.

Davis said that the United States would seek to obtain access to undeclared nuclear sites for experts of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty clearly calls for inspections by the IAEA not only on a onetime basis but on a regular basis and on a spot basis, on any basis that is required to make certain that non-proliferation is obtained,” Lugar told a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

“There is, I think, a necessity not to be satisfied with some kind of compromise, modest agreement here,” Nunn said.