Agence France-Presse,
WASHINGTON: US experts are to begin disabling North Korea's nuclear weapons arsenal in about three weeks, the State Department said Thursday following talks in Pyongyang.
The timeframe was given by Sung Kim, the head of the US State Department's Korea desk, who completed talks with North Korean officials on the nuclear disablement mission, said Tom Casey, a department spokesman.
Kim and his 20-member interagency team that visited North Korea were on their way home after a one week pre-disablement mission, Casey said.
“Work to actually start the process of disablement could begin somewhere in the next three weeks or so. So we look forward to that happening,” Casey said, basing it on Kim's assessment.
“And in terms of next steps, what we would be looking for is a technical team to go out and help participate in that actual disablement,” he said.
The team would work with the North Koreans “on the actual specific work of disablement” of the atomic facilities, including the key Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
North Korea agreed earlier this month to disable key facilities at the Yongbyon complex and declare all other nuclear programs by the end of the year.
In exchange for these actions, China, South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia would supply North Korea with energy and other aid and offer up diplomatic concessions to the isolated nation.
The United States is taking great pains to ensure that North Korea sticks to its plan to declare and disable its nuclear program and eventually dismantle it and surrender all the atomic material.
North Korea previously shut down the Yongbyon reactor under a 1994 agreement clinched during the administration of then president Bill Clinton, but it withdrew from the pact after the Bush administration in 2002 accused it of developing a secret uranium enrichment program.
The North responded by throwing out weapons inspectors, leaving the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and resuming its atomic activities.
