South Korea acknowledged Wednesday it should have reported to the United Nations nuclear watchdog four years ago that it used nuclear material in an experiment that led to the production of a small amount of enriched uranium.  

However, it is up to the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to determine whether the failure to report constitutes a violation of the Safeguard Agreement, a South Korean government official was quoted by Yonhap News Agency as saying in a background briefing.

"Basically, the experiment itself is not subject to reporting, but I think we should have reported using nuclear material (to the IAEA)," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"However, we cannot say whether that constitutes a violation of the Safeguard Agreement. There will be a judgment from the IAEA on this," he said.

Last week, South Korea admitted that there was a one-off experiment in early 2000 that led to the separation of 0.2 gram of uranium. It touched off speculation that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program.

South Korea has categorically denied those suspicions, saying it was purely academic activity that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and that the enriched uranium was far below weapons-grade.

The official, who gave the background briefing, said an inspection can be waived if the amount of nuclear material involved is not a "significant quantity," but in that case too, reporting should come first.

However, the government failed to do so as it had no knowledge of the experiment at that time, he said.

The acknowledgment came ahead of a meeting of the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors scheduled for next week at the agency's headquarters in Vienna. IAEA chief Mohamad Elbaradei is expected to make a verbal report on the South Korean nuclear case.

Inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog had one week inspection in South Korea from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4.

Ahead of last week's admission of the uranium enrichment, South Korea gave advance notification to the United States, China, Japan and Russia, countries that participate in the six-party talks on nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, the official said.

He also stressed that the case should not affect the six-party talks since the experiment was just a one-time research activity.

(Xinhua News Agency September 9, 2004)