Top US Negotiator Christopher Hill has indicated that North Korea's plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor could be disabled by the end of the year, reviving hopes of resolving the long-drawn dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
Talking to newsmen in Washington on Monday, Hill, who is the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, however, said the coming weeks would be a very important period for the Six-Party Talks.
Besides North Korea, the participants are; South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the US.
Hill, who paid a surprise visit to Pyongyang last week, hoped that the shutdown of the Yongbyon facility would follow the visit from today till 29th to Pyongyang of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA has been asked to negotiate the terms for monitoring North Korea's shutdown of the Yongbyon facility.
Hill said representatives of the six parties would meet in the second week of July to ''plot the next set of initiatives after the shutdown of the complex and begin the process of sequencing additional economic assistance.'' This was promised by the participants in the talks.
The February 13 agreement, negotiated by the six, envisages closure of Yongbyon as part of the first phase of the elimination of nuclear programmes from the Korean Peninsula and the normalisation of relations.
Hill said North Korea had also agreed to address questions pertaining to its highly enriched uranium programme. ''We had a very good discussion about it, I am not going into the specifics of it except to say that they acknowledged that this issue must be resolved to mutual satisfaction,'' he said.
He said the United States would not accept any final nuclear deal with North Korea without the resolution of the uranium enrichment issue.
