YONHAP NEWS

(2nd LD) Hill to visit Seoul next week

   SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- The chief U.S. nuclear envoy will visit South Korea next week to discuss Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's planned attendance at the inaugural ceremony of President-elect Lee Myung-bak on Feb. 25, diplomatic sources said Thursday.

   Christopher Hill, also an assistant secretary of state, will arrive here Tuesday to discuss the stalled multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear programs and other issues of mutual concern, as well as Rice's attendance at the presidential inauguration, the sources said.

   Hill will also visit China and Japan during the trip, the sources added.

   He will visit Beijing before arriving here and fly to Tokyo after a two-day stay in Seoul ending Wednesday.

   The Asia tour by Rice and Hill comes as six-nation talks on the nuclear dispute remain deadlocked over Pyongyang's failure to provide a complete list of its nuclear programs under a multilateral nuclear deal.

   North Korea says it submitted a full inventory of its nuclear programs in November but the U.S. insists it must account fully for a suspected highly enriched uranium weapons program aside from its plutonium activities.

   Japan's top nuclear envoy, Akitaka Saiki, will visit South Korea on Friday for the first time since he was appointed to the post last month, according to South Korean Foreign Ministry officials. He will meet with his South Korean counterpart, Chun Young-woo, and senior diplomats during the visit, the officials said.

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