Two members of a US delegation were due to brief South Korean officials yesterday about their surprise tour of a nuclear complex in North Korea that is believed to be capable of making weapons.
John Lewis, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, and other experts were the first outsiders allowed into North Korea's Yongbyon facilities since UN inspectors were expelled a year ago.
Two members of the unofficial US delegation, Keith Luse and Frank Jannuzi, both Senate foreign relations committee aides, flew into Seoul on Sunday, but they declined to comment on their visit to Yongbyon.
They were scheduled to meet officials from South Korea's foreign ministry and unification ministry yesterday to brief them on their five-day visit to North Korea.
The US suspects North Korea may have resumed reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium for use in nuclear weapons and has been trying, along with its allies, to resume six-way talks with North Korea to end the nuclear row.
North Korea said on Saturday it had shown a visiting US delegation its "nuclear deterrent" and hoped it would provide a basis for a peaceful settlement of the row with the US over its nuclear activities.
The six parties -- the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia -- met inconclusively in Beijing in August.
Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan (
Tang, a former Chinese foreign minister, told a delegation of senior Japanese ruling party officials, the talks looked likely next month because North Korea and the US appeared to be getting closer to overcoming their differences.
North Korea's state media marked the first anniversary of its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty with a commentary on Sunday blaming the US for ignoring Pyongyang's overtures for a resolution of the crisis.
"The world is now watching whether the US has a true will to settle the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula on the principle of simultaneous actions and peaceful co-existence," the North's mouthpiece, news agency KCNA, reported on Sunday.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told Japan's NHK national television in an interview that aired on Sunday Washington was committed to the next round of talks and he was confident it would be held in the "not-too-far future."
Last week, North Korea offered to freeze its nuclear activities in a move that has raised hopes for a fresh round of talks.
The US said in October 2002 North Korea had admitted to a clandestine uranium enrichment program to build nuclear weapons, which US officials say violated a 1994 agreement by the North to freeze its nuclear program.
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