VIENNA, Sept 2: The UN nuclear watchdog has sent inspectors to South Korea as the government there has admitted its scientists carried out secret experiments in enriching uranium, the agency said in a press release on Thursday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the South Korean government had told it last month "that it had enriched nuclear material in the course of atomic vapour laser isotope separation (AVLIS) experiments that had not been declared to the IAEA", according to the press statement.

It said South Korea stated "these experiments had been on a laboratory scale and involved the production of only milligram quantities of enriched uranium." "These activities were carried out without the government's knowledge at a nuclear site in Korea in 2000, and... the activities had been terminated," the South Koreans said, according to the statement.

Under pressure from the United States, South Korea had officially terminated in the 1970s its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Inspectors were now in South Korea and will report to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei "upon their return to Vienna early next week", the statement said.

It said Mr ElBaradei would report on the matter to the IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna on Sept 13. The 35-nation IAEA board could send US Korea to the UN Security Council for violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The board has already sent North Korea to the Security Council after it kicked out IAEA inspectors last year and is considering whether to send Iran to the council for possible sanctions over what the United States claims is a secret nuclear weapons programme. -AFP