US nuclear envoy says North Korea showed willingness to shut reactor

A senior US envoy returned from North Korea said it showed readiness to promptly shut down a plutonium-producing reactor - the latest sign the communist country may live up to its pledge to stop making nuclear weapons.

Still, Christopher Hill - the chief US negotiator at international talks on North Korea's nuclear programs - cautioned that completely disarming the communist state would be a long, arduous process.

Returning from a surprise two-day trip to North Korea's capital, Hill said he was "buoyed by a sense that we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives, that is complete denuclearization, but also burdened by the realization of the fact that we're going to have to spend a great deal of time, a great deal of effort, a lot of work in achieving these."

Hill, an assistant secretary of state, held meetings with North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator and foreign minister.

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 discussions on the procedures for shutting down its Yongbyon reactor. The country expelled the UN nuclear inspectors in late 2002.

North Korea "indicated that they are prepared promptly to shut down the Yongbyon facility as called for in the February agreement," Hill said, referring to a disarmament pact under which the North 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 the country's 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 US$25 million of North Korean funds.

The money was freed earlier this year with US blessing, but it was only last week that it began to be transferred to a North Korean account at a Russian bank.

Hill said earlier this week that North Korea had received the money, but told reporters on Friday the funds were "getting" to the accounts in Russia.

Later Friday, Russia's deputy foreign minister said the funds will be fully transferred sometime next week.

"Under the clarified data, (the transfer) will be fully completed at the beginning of next week," Losyukov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency. "The Russian financial service is working hard on this right now."

North Korea had made the money's release a main condition for its disarmament. It stayed 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.

Hill said Friday the North is also ready to completely disable the Yongbyon reactor, a later step in the February agreement, though he added that details needed to be worked out.

In an interview Friday with CNN, Hill estimated that North Korea possesses "about 110 pounds" of reprocessed plutonium, which he emphasized the country must abandon.

"But frankly, that's going to be at a later stage," he told CNN. "What we're trying to do now is make sure that 110-pound problem doesn't become a 220-pound problem, that is, we'd like to get this reactor shut down, so we don't have more plutonium to deal with."

North Korea is to ultimately get aid worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil and other political concessions when it disables the reactor.

Hill also said the two sides discussed holding "an early meeting" of chief delegates to the six-nation nuclear talks, and a separate meeting of foreign ministers from those countries.

Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, said he understood North Korea gave "a positive response" to the suggestion of holding a chief delegates' meeting in early July and a foreign ministers' meeting "at an appropriate time after that."

North Korea's state-controlled media, other than reporting Hill's arrival and departure, remained mum on the substance of the visit. A Japan-based pro-North Korean newspaper, however, praised it.

Hill's trip will help "accelerate improving North Korea-US relations and implementing agreements" reached at the six-nation talks, Choson Sinbo, considered a North Korean government mouthpiece, said Friday.

In rare amicable rhetoric, the newspaper said both the US and North Korea showed "a strong desire" to make progress on the nuclear issue.

"The US attitude is also very progressive," the report said. As long as Washington shows sincerity in improving relations, "it is possible for North Korea to keep pace with the US," it said.