South Korea’s chief negotiator left for Washington yesterday for discussion aimed at restarting stalled nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, foreign ministry officials said.
Kim Sook will meet his counterpart Christopher Hill today to discuss the North’s promised declaration of its nuclear activities.
Their meeting will come just four days after the US accused the North of helping Syria build a reactor, injecting a note of uncertainty into the six-nation negotiations which began in 2003.
The North has not responded to the allegations but in the past has denied proliferation.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also denied in remarks published yesterday that the site raided by Israel last September was a nuclear reactor under construction.
The White House has said it is still committed to the six-party talks.
It has said it hopes its accusations would prompt Pyongyang to be more willing to disclose atomic and proliferation activities.
South Korean officials have said that efforts to resume the stalled negotiations will stay on course despite the concerns over proliferation.
The declaration has blocked progress for months.
Under last year’s deal, the North was to have made the declaration by Dec. 31 in preparation for the final phase of the agreement — the dismantling of its atomic plants and the handover of all nuclear material.
In return for total denuclearization it would receive energy aid, a lifting of bilateral sanctions, the establishment of diplomatic relations with the US and a formal peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula.
The US says the declaration must clear up suspicions about an alleged secret uranium enrichment program and the suspected proliferation to Syria.
The North denies both activities. Under a reported tentative deal, it will merely “acknowledge” Washington’s concerns about the two issues in a confidential document to the US.
It would detail its admitted plutonium operation, which fueled an October 2006 atomic weapons test, in a formal declaration to talks host China.
A US team visited Pyongyang last week to discuss the declaration and ways to verify it, with both sides reporting progress.
The meeting between the two top nuclear envoys will be the first since Kim’s appointment by South Korea’s new government two weeks ago.
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