YONHAP NEWS

U.S. delegation visits N. Korea for nuke talks

   SEOUL, April 22 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. State Department's top Korea expert began a three-day trip to North Korea Tuesday to fine-tune the terms of Pyongyang's declaration of its nuclear activity as part of continued consultations between the two sides since their top nuclear negotiators met in Singapore two weeks ago.

   An interagency team, led by Sung Kim, director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Korea Affairs, crossed the heavily armed inter-Korean border by car. Sung made such a cross-border trip to the North late last year but Pyongyang's permission for the U.S. group to make overland visit is extraordinary.

   North Korea has banned South Korean government officials from crossing the Demilitarized Zone since late last month as tensions between the two Koreas have grown since the installation of the South's Lee Myung-bak administration, which has taken a tougher stance against its communist neighbor.

   Some analysts here say the North's move may be a tactic, involving talking only to Washington while shunning dialogue with Seoul.

   The U.S. delegation is expected to discuss details of Pyongyang's planned declaration of its nuclear stockpiles, a prerequisite to advancing the six-way talks on the nuclear crisis. The chief U.S. nuclear negotiator and his counterpart Kim Kye-gwan reportedly reached a tentative deal on the outline of the elements and format of the declaration in their Singapore talks.

   Arriving in South Korea on Monday, Kim said, "We will be talking about issues related to the declaration. We expect to have very detailed and substantive discussions. We, of course, hope to have significant progress on this visit."
His activity in the North is likely to focus on working out ways of verifying the North's declaration about its plutonium-based program.

   "There has to be a very clear understanding on all parties' parts as to the full nature and scope of North Korea's nuclear activities," State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters earlier in the day. "And that obviously includes the one that everyone's familiar with, what we have the most information about going in, which is their plutonium efforts including the production facilities at Yongbyon."
Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, is the hotbed of the North's atomic weapons program, housing a plutonium-producing reactor.

   The North reportedly claims it has produced about 30 kg of plutonium so far, far less than the U.S. estimates of 50 kg.

   South Korean Foreign Ministry officials said they would meet with the U.S. delegation after it returns to Seoul from the North to be debriefed on the result of the trip.

   lcd@yna.co.kr
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