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US envoy on Pyongyang trip
Washington's top nuclear negotiator took a new proposal to North Korea on Wednesday to try to salvage a derailed disarmament pact amid reported signs of activity around the communist country's nuclear test site.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:07 October 2, 2008
Seoul: Washington's top nuclear negotiator took a new proposal to North Korea on Wednesday to try to salvage a derailed disarmament pact amid reported signs of activity around the communist country's nuclear test site.
Assistant US Secretary of State Christopher Hill drove into the North through the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone dividing the two Koreas late yesterday morning, US embassy spokesman Aaron Tarver said.
North Korea's official news agency KCNA reported only that Hill and his team had arrived in Pyongyang, the capital of the reclusive Stalinist state, just a few hours' drive from the border.
Hill's trip comes amid reports that the North's autocratic leader, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke in August, raising concern that his prolonged illness could destabilise the Korean peninsula. North Korea denies that Kim, 66, is ill.
Relations between the two Koreas - which technically remain at war and are divided by the world's most heavily armed border - also have been frayed in recent months. Ties further deteriorated after a North Korean army guard fatally shot a South Korean tourist at a mountain resort in the North in July.
Military talks
However, the sides agreed to hold working-level military talks inside the DMZ today, their first official meeting since Seoul's conservative new president took office in February.
North Korea's decision to abandon the international disarmament-for-aid pact has alarmed the five nations that negotiated the deal in February 2007. In mid-August, Pyongyang stopped disabling and began restoring its nuclear facilities and last week ordered UN nuclear monitors to leave its Yongbyon nuclear facility.
In a further sign of defiance, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported indications that the North had begun restoring the site where it conducted its first-ever nuclear test blast in October 2006.
Smoke was seen rising from the Punggyeri site in the country's northeast, Yonhap cited an unidentified South Korean government official as saying. The official said it could indicate North Korea is trying to repair the site for use.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said yesterday it could not confirm the report.
Hill was making the trip to Pyongyang to try to persuade the regime to return to the nuclear pact. He said Tuesday night in Seoul that his goal was to persuade North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan to agree to Washington's demand for a verification system to account for the North's nuclear arsenal - a task he acknowledged would be tough.
"We are in a very difficult, very tough phase of negotiations," he said.
The North has rejected US requests on verification and has accused Washington of not living up to its end of the deal by removing North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
In Washington, a senior US official said Hill was taking a new face-saving proposal that would have North Korea agree to a verification programme but submit details first to its Chinese allies. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US would then provisionally remove North Korea from the terrorism sponsors list. That would edge around the current impasse, in which the US says it won't remove North Korea from the list until it signs up to the verification measures.
US officials said they were not sure North Korea would agree to the idea or, if they did, whether any Pyongyang proposals presented to the Chinese would be acceptable to Washington.
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