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Six-nation meet on N Korea may take place soon

Six-nation talks on scrapping North Korea's nuclear program are likely to resume next week, South Korea's foreign ministry said yesterday, as disarmament efforts gathered momentum after months of stalemate.

"The talks are likely to take place on July 18 to 19, although the date has not been fixed yet," a ministry spokeswoman said.

Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source in Beijing as saying that the forum's host, China, has notified other countries that it wants to resume next Wednesday.

China proposed a two-day meeting with a possible one-day extension, the source said, adding it was expected to announce the date yesterday afternoon. The foreign ministry in Beijing had no comment.

The six-party talks which began in 2003 group China, North and South Korea, the US, Japan and Russia. They assumed added urgency when the North staged its first nuclear weapons test last October.

The source said that North Korea and the US would hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Beijing forum on ways to disable its nuclear facilities, including a suspected highly enriched uranium program.

US chief negotiator Christopher Hill is expected to visit South Korea and Japan for consultations before the next six-party round, the source said.

The six nations in February agreed on a deal under which the North would declare and disable all its nuclear programs in the presence of UN inspectors in return for 1 million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees.

But a now-resolved row over US financial sanctions blocked progress for months.

Last week North Korea announced it was considering closing its Yongbyon reactor, which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium, as soon as a first shipment of fuel oil arrives from South Korea.

The shutdown is the first step in the deal and is to be rewarded with an initial 50,000 tonnes of fuel for the energy-starved communist state.

The first 6,200-tonne shipment will leave the South Korean port of Ulsan tomorrow. Thursday. It is expected to arrive in Sonbong in North Korea on Saturday.

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday authorized the return of inspectors to the North for the first time since they were expelled in 2002 to verify the shutdown.

A nine-member team is expected to depart within the next "week or two," agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters.

It will re-establish international monitoring nearly five years after the agency was kicked out in December 2002, when Pyongyang moved to restart Yongbyon following a row with the US over a suspected highly enriched uranium program.

ElBaradei, who is expected in Seoul today, said "shutting down the facilities ... should not take much time, probably a few days" but then surveillance cameras and other equipment would have to be installed.

The site includes the 5 megawatts Yongbyon reactor plus two other reactors under construction, a reprocessing plant and a fuel fabrication plant.

Diplomats said the IAEA would maintain a permanent two-person inspector presence at Yongbyon once the mission there resumes.

The US said on Monday that it preferred the six-party talks to resume after Yongbyon closes.

"I think ideally what everybody would like to see is an envoys-level meeting build on some already increased momentum," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, citing proposals for talks in the next week or two.

Such momentum would stem from "a shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon [reactor], having the IAEA in there and full strength, performing their full mission that they have set out for," he told reporters.
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