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N Korea to shut down reactor
23/06/2007 10:13 - (SA)
Tokyo - North Korea could shut down its plutonium-producing reactor within three weeks, a top US nuclear envoy said on Saturday, after returning from a rare visit to the reclusive country.
Christopher Hill - the chief US negotiator at international talks on North Korea's nuclear programs - also told reporters in Tokyo that the next round of nuclear negotiations could begin in early July, before a full shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor.
Hill said the reactor would be halted after North Korea and the UN's nuclear watchdog agree on how to monitor the process. UN inspectors are to arrive in North Korea on Tuesday.
"We do expect this to be soon, probably within three weeks... though I don't want to be pinned down on precisely the date," Hill told reporters after briefing his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, on the outcome of his two-day surprise trip to the North Korean capital.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency described the talks as "comprehensive and productive" on Saturday.
The trip - the first by a high-ranking US official since October 2002 - came amid growing optimism that North Korea may finally be ready to take concrete steps toward fulfilling a promise to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Last week, the secretive state invited inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin discussing the procedures for shutting down its Yongbyon reactor. The country expelled the UN nuclear inspectors in late 2002.
The IAEA announced on Friday that a delegation led by Olli Heinonen, the agency's deputy director general for safeguards, would arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a five-day visit.
Hill said earlier he was happy that the team was set to go, but cautioned that halting the reactor was just a first step.
Just a beginning
"Shutting down the reactor won't solve all our problems, but in order to solve our problems we need to make this beginning," he told reporters after arriving in Tokyo. "We really think this is the time to pick up the pace."
North Korean officials told Hill during his visit that they were prepared to shut down the Yongbyon facility as called for in a disarmament agreement reached in February, under which North Korea pledged to close the reactor and allow in UN inspectors in exchange for energy aid.
North Korea was to have done that by mid-April, but missed the deadline over a delay in resolving a separate financial dispute involving North Korean funds frozen at a Macau bank.
The bank was blacklisted by the US for allegedly aiding North Korea in money laundering and counterfeiting, leading to the freezing of some $25m of North Korean money.
The funds were freed earlier this year, but only last week started to be transferred to a North Korean account at a Russian bank.
Russia's deputy foreign minister said on Friday the funds would be fully transferred sometime next week.
North Korea had made the money's release a main condition for its disarmament, and used the financial dispute as a reason to stay away from six-party nuclear talks - involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US - for more than a year, during which it conducted its first-ever nuclear test explosion in October.
- AP
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