Agence France-Presse,
WASHINGTON: The United States said Wednesday it expected a multilateral agreement with North Korea to be sealed in September requiring Pyongyang to declare and disable its nuclear weapons program by the end of 2007.
Despite some delay in working out the technical details, the pact could be clinched at six-party talks among envoys early next month, Assistant US Secretary of State Christopher Hill said.
“We are really going to try to get to this in early September so that we can then have an agreement on the implementation of the next phase, which is disablement and declaration on the part of the North Koreans,” said Hill, the chief US envoy to the talks.
“So, we will try to set that up in the next six-party meeting and then begin implementing it in the fall with the hope that we can get through this by the end of calendar year '07,” he said.
If an agreement for North Korea to disable its nuclear arsenal is ready for implementation with “no real barriers ahead,” Hill said the first ever meeting of foreign ministers of the six parties — the United States, China, Japan, the two Koreas and Russia — could be held in October in Beijing.
The ministerial talks would give a political push for North Korea's denuclearization, officials said.
North Korea has already shut down a key nuclear reactor at Yongbyon under a a six-party agreement reached on February 13.
Under the deal, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear program in return for aid and security and diplomatic guarantees, especially normalizing ties with the United States.
The reactor shutdown was rewarded with 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from South Korea. If the North declares and permanently disables all its nuclear facilities, it will receive another 950,000 tons of oil or equivalent aid as well as the diplomatic deals.
Hill said despite the shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor, “we're definitely not half way there, but we're beyond just the beginning” of efforts aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
He said that North Korea had to declare and disable all its nuclear programs despite reports saying that it would only do so for three nuclear facilities — all at Yongbyon.
The United States suspects North Korea is running a secretive highly enriched uranium program in addition to the projects connected to the plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.
Both highly enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons.
North Korea, which carried out its first test of an atom bomb last year, has never admitted to having a highly enriched uranium program.
Looking ahead, Hill said that once North Korea disabled its nuclear program, the six-parties would devise what he called the “end game” — for the hardline communist state to “abandon its fissile material and explosive devices.”
Efforts would also be stepped up simultaneously to forge a permanent peace deal following the bloody Korean War in the 1950's as well as establish a framework for Northeast Asia security, he said.
“If we're going to get to those end-game elements, we're going to have to make progress on this next stage (disabling Pyongyang's nuclear program),” said Hill, speaking ahead of his departure Thursday for a US-North Korea bilateral working group meeting in Geneva.
The second meeting of the group, among five set up under the February 13 accord, will discuss plans for the United States to normalize ties with North Korea and remove it from the state sponsors of terrorism blacklist if Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear weapons arsenal.
The United States had insisted that nothing less than a complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear arsenal would lead to restoration of ties to end more than 50 years of feuding between Washington and the reclusive state.
