Tokyo – North Korea could shut down its plutonium-producing reactor within three weeks, a top U.S. nuclear envoy said Saturday after returning from a rare visit to the reclusive country.
Russia, meanwhile, said North Korean funds frozen at a Macau bank had reached North Korean accounts at a private Russian bank, clearing a hurdle in a financial dispute with the United States that had complicated the disarmament process.
Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator at international talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs, also said the next round of nuclear negotiations could begin in early July, before a full shutdown of the Yongbyon reactor.
Hill said the reactor would be closed after North Korea and the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agree on how to monitor the process. U.N. inspectors are to arrive in North Korea on Tuesday.
“We do expect this to be soon, probably within three weeks … though I don’t want to be pinned down on precisely the date,” Hill told reporters in Tokyo after briefing his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, on the outcome of his two-day surprise trip to the North Korean capital.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency described the talks as “comprehensive and productive” on Saturday.
The trip – the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since 2002 – came amid growing optimism that North Korea may finally be ready to take concrete steps toward fulfilling a promise to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Last week, North Korea invited inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss procedures for shutting down its Yongbyon reactor. The country expelled the U.N. nuclear inspectors in late 2002.
The IAEA announced Friday that a delegation led by Olli Heinonen, the agency’s deputy director general for safeguards, would arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a five-day visit.
Hill said he was happy that the team was set to go, but cautioned that halting the reactor was just a first step.
“Shutting down the reactor won’t solve all our problems, but in order to solve our problems we need to make this beginning,” he said.
North Korean officials told Hill during his visit that they were prepared to shut down Yongbyon as called for in a disarmament agreement reached in February, under which North Korea pledged to close the reactor and allow in U.N. inspectors in exchange for energy aid, including 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil.
North Korea was to have done that by mid-April, but delayed because of the financial dispute. Some $25 million in North Korean funds was frozen at the Macau bank after it was blacklisted by the U.S. for allegedly aiding North Korea in money laundering and counterfeiting.
The funds were freed earlier this year, but only last week started to be transferred to a North Korean account at a Russian bank. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the transfer has been made.
“At the present the transfer of the North Korean money from Macau to a Russian commercial bank has been completed,” the ministry said in a statement. “We hope that now the participants of the six-sided process will be able to switch to practical moves directed at realization of the (February) Beijing agreement.”
North Korea had made the money’s release a main condition for its disarmament, and used the financial dispute as a reason to stay away from six-nation nuclear talks – involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. – for more than a year, during which it conducted its first-ever nuclear test explosion in October.
Hill said Saturday that talks could begin before the reactor was fully shut down.
“I would expect it to happen soon after shutdown begins,” Hill said, adding the exact timing depended on scheduling by the host nation, China.
KCNA said that during Hill’s trip, “both sides shared the views that they would start implementing the (February) agreement on the premise that the issue of the remittance of the funds is finally settled.”
Associated Press writer Bo-Mi Lim in Seoul contributed to this report.
