North Korea is expected to hand over a list of its nuclear programs within weeks, a US envoy said yesterday, as the communist state prepares disable its plutonium-producing atomic plants.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill said a US expert team who arrived on Thursday in North Korea was to travel to the main nuclear complex at Yongbyon later yesterday or today to prepare to supervise the disabling of three main plants there next week.
Under a February six-nation accord the North, which carried out its first nuclear test in October last year, has pledged to declare and disable all its atomic programs by year-end in return for energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If it goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its plutonium and weapons, it can expect normalized relations with Washington as well as a peace pact to replace the armistice which ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
"We're expecting the first draft declaration ... probably in a matter of the next couple of weeks," said Hill, the US Assistant Secretary of State who has been Washington's chief envoy to the six-nation talks.
"The idea is that as we receive that, we have some information on programs we would want to have follow-on discussions on, with the understanding that by the end of the year we will have a complete declaration that everyone would agree is complete."
Hill was speaking in Seoul after talks with his South Korean counterpart Chun Young-woo.
Hill said a peace treaty, and the lifting of UN nuclear-related sanctions, would come only after North Korea completely abandons its nuclear weapons and related programs.
"The sanctions are there until the DPRK [North Korea] gets out of the nuclear business," he said.
While negotiations on a pact could begin after "substantial disablement," Hill warned: "We cannot conclude a peace process until the time that there is really a denuclearization. We are not going to have a peace agreement with a nuclearized DPRK."
The South and North Korean leaders, after a rare summit last month, called for the leaders of countries which fought the war to meet and declare an end to the war.
The declaration sparked accusations from critics that the Seoul government is moving too fast to make peace.
The February accord also envisages the North being removed eventually from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"What we look forward to in getting North Korea off the terrorism list is that they have stopped all terrorism acts and fully signed up to UN covenants against terrorism," the US envoy said.
North Korea, which spent half a century developing its nuclear program, shut the Yongbyon plants in July. Disablement aims to put them out of action for up to a year.
After a 1994 denuclearization pact fell apart in 2002, the North quickly resumed production of bomb-making plutonium, and now has an estimated 45kg to 65kg of the material, enough to build several bombs.
Hill said China is trying to schedule a meeting of foreign ministers of the six nations involved in the talks -- the two Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia -- hopefully by the end of the year.
The US envoy was briefing Chun on his earlier talks in Beijing, including a meeting with his North Korean counterpart.
He was to leave for Japan later yesterday.
Japan's ties with North Korea are soured by what Tokyo says is Pyongyang's refusal to account for all the Japanese civilians kidnapped by the communist state in the Cold War era.
"We have continuously encouraged the DPRK to address this issue, to return any abductees in the DPRK, to properly investigate this issue and to make sure things of this kind never, ever happen again," Hill said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in