WASHINGTON — North Korea will begin disabling key nuclear facilities within weeks and start disclosing details of its nuclear programs under a six-nation agreement to be announced this week, U.S. and Asian diplomats said Tuesday.
Success on the deal appears to have been aided by a “side understanding” between Washington and Pyongyang that could accelerate the removal of North Korea from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The United States also appears willing to accept, initially, more limited action to disable three key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon than it originally sought, with the understanding that additional work to incapacitate the facilities would occur later. In exchange, North Korea is expected to disclose the extent of its weapons- grade plutonium, including how much was used in a nuclear test last year.
North Korea will allow nuclear experts from Russia, China and the United States to examine aluminum tubes procured from Russia that could have been used in a uranium enrichment program, diplomats said.
But diplomats said it is unclear whether North Korea will admit to acquiring centrifuges for use in such a program, as the United States has charged. The Bush administration in 2002 accused North Korea of having a clandestine uranium enrichment program, and the accusation led to the collapse of a 1994 deal that had frozen Yongbyon facilities.
The flurry of diplomatic activity, coming nearly a year after North Korea shocked Asia by conducting its first nuclear test, demonstrates both increasing flexibility by the Bush administration in its waning months and increased willingness by North Korea to close parts of its nuclear program for potential economic benefits.
Meanwhile Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of North Koreans cheered and waved pink paper flowers as leaders of the two Koreas shook hands at the start of a summit that is expected to inject large amounts of money from the booming capitalist South into the struggling Stalinist North.
The reclusive North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, dressed in the gray military-style jumpsuit he wears to meet the world’s television cameras, looked dour as he walked with the smiling South Korean president, Roh Moo-Hyun.
They met on a red carpet in front of a performing arts hall in the North Korean capital Pyong yang, where their three- day summit started today.
The atmospherics of this summit, only the second such meeting in the more than half a century since the North and South fought an all-out war, seemed rather cooler than in the first summit in 2000.
Seven years ago, Kim broke into broad smiles, joked about his reputation as a hermit leader and embraced then-South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung.
On Tuesday, after smiling slightly when he shook Roh’s hand, Kim was poker-faced as he nodded and waved at the vast crowds that cheered the meeting. Now 65, he appears to have aged considerably since the last summit, with gray in his signature bouffant hairdo, which appeared smaller than in years past.
The two made no comments for cameras at their 12-minute initial meeting and then left the arts center in separate vehicles. Kim did not attend a state dinner Tuesday night for Roh, an event where many had expected he would put in an appearance.
