Agence France-Presse,
Sydney: The top US nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that North Korea would have to hand over the plutonium it created with its atomic weapons programme to make further progress on an aid-for-disarmament deal.
Christopher Hill, a US assistant secretary of state, said that the isolated Communist country possessed 50 kilogrammes (110 pounds) of plutonium that would be the focus of international talks in the new year.
North Korea has not acknowledged that the material exists and Hill admitted during a visit to Australia that it would be difficult to get Pyongyang to agree.
However, he stressed that it was in North Korea's interests to comply, holding out the prospect of involvement in a new northeast Asian security grouping and peace talks.
That could eventually lead to a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War, he said, and to the demilitarisation of the highly fortified border between the two Koreas.
“The issue will be to get this 50 kilogrammes,” he said. “We need to get the North Koreans to agree to abandon this 50 kilogrammes. That's going to be the toughest sell. Frankly there'd be a lot in it for North Korea.”
Successful negotiations would open the way for a “North East Asia peace and security mechanism,” a regional grouping that would include North Korea, helping it to have broader contact with the outside world.
“It would allow them to have membership in a regional organisation where not every issue needs to be solved bilaterally, where age-old issues stemming from history or economic disputes or whatever could come through,” he said.
Full peace negotiations to end the Korean War, which pitted China and North Korea against South Korea and the United States, could also follow. The conflict ended with an armistice rather than a full peace treaty.
Peace talks could also lead to the removal of the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas, one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world and the last true Cold War frontier.
“I think we would be able to reach a peace treaty where North Korea would be accepted as part of the landscape on the Korean Peninsula,” Hill said.
Pyongyang shocked the world last year with its first nuclear bomb test, which galvanised international talks to dismantle its nuclear weapons programmes.
The talks, involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the US, led to a deal whereby Pyongyang agreed to disable key facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and declare all other nuclear programmes by year's end.
North Korea shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and four other related facilities in July, and allowed inspectors from the UN atomic watchdog back into the country.
It has received the first tranches of a promised one million tonnes of fuel aid in return for progress achieved so far
