By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter

Foreign Affairs-Trade Minister Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that the international nuclear watchdog agency was unlikely to adopt a statement, criticizing South Korea’s nuclear experiments on the final day of its board meeting Friday.

During a press briefing at the Foreign Ministry building, Ban rebuffed a report by Japan’s Kyodo news agency Wednesday that the board governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will adopt a chairman’s statement to express their concerns about South Korea’s past nuclear experiments.

Ban explained that it would not be a chairman’s statement, but a brief summary, containing abstracts of various comments made by member countries.

``I think the report was talking about a brief,’’ Ban said. ``A brief doesn’t aim to criticize something. It is an abstract of what board members have said on various issues.’’

He also expressed his regret over foreign news media’s exaggeration of nuclear experiments conducted in 1982 and 2000, saying some stories are not based on facts.

``These stories based on false information compromise our commitment to a nuclear-free policy,’’ Ban said.

In a related development, the 34-member board delayed its planned review of South Korea’s nuclear experiments as its meeting in Vienna, Austria, was stalled Wednesday, local time, amid disagreements between the U.S. and member countries in Europe over Iran’s nuclear programs. The board meeting began Monday with a schedule to last at least three days.

Media reports predicted that the IAEA board of governors will likely have a decision on South Korea’s nuclear experiments by Friday, Korean Standard Time, and place it before the organization’s 48th general conference, which starts in Vienna on Monday.

Ban, however, rebutted such reports by saying, ``The South Korean case will likely be discussed at the next meeting in November because it will take two to three months for the IAEA inspectors to finalize their report on our nuclear experiments.’’

Ban said the Seoul government will prepare for the possibility of the South Korean case being forwarded to the Security Council, confirming that the IAEA board members are currently discussing whether they will bring it before the U.N. security body.

Although the international nuclear watchdog has yet to begin its actual review of the country’s past nuclear experiments, South Korea has already started to increase its own capacity to monitor and inspect any nuclear activities in the country.

Seoul plans to make the nation’s existing safeguard inspection agency, the Technology Center for Nuclear Control, as an independent agency. The nuclear control center now belongs to the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, whose scientists conducted the 1982 and 2000 experiments without government permission or knowledge.

South Korea’s nuclear activities came into the spotlight earlier this month after the government acknowledged an unauthorized experiment in 2000 to produce 0.2 gram of enriched uranium. The country also admitted to extracting a minuscule amount of plutonium in 1982, but maintained the government had no prior knowledge of the tests.

im@koreatimes.co.kr