The head of the UN’s atomic watchdog said on Wednesday his agency’s first direct talks with North Korea in more than four years had been useful and the Stalinist nation remained committed to disarming. However International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei also cautioned significant hurdles remained in the long-running international campaign to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. “The DPRK (North Korea) said they were committed to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But that won’t happen overnight,” ElBaradei told reporters in Beijing after his two-day visit to Pyongyang. |