You all know that ISIS and “Arms Control Wonk”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4447/iaea-dg-reports-on-iran-dprk posted the IAEA reports on “North Korea”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_DPRK_2Sept2011.pdf and “Iran.”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_2Sept2011.pdf

Each document has several interesting aspects, but I was struck by the section of the N Korea report which explains that Libya told the IAEA in 2003 that it had imported from the AQK network “two small cylinders containing UF6 in September 2000, and one large cylinder containing UF6 in February 2001.”

This is significant, I think, because it’s the first time that the IAEA has confirmed that the natural UF6 in the large container “very likely” originated in North Korea. That wasn’t “so clear”:http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1763 a few years ago. This also, of course, indicates that North Korea had non-trivial “undeclared conversion capabilities prior to 2001.” There have been question marks about such a capability.

Interestingly, the report says that the UF6 in the other two containers probably didn’t come from N Korea, even though all three containers were in that country. The report does not say where this UF6 came from.

Not bad for one paragraph.

*UPDATE:*

Ah. ISIS “noticed this as well.”:http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/isis-analysis-of-iaea-safeguards-report-on-the-democratic-peoples-republic-/