US Nuclear Envoy Says Talks in North Korean Capital 'Substantive' | Voice of America - English
The chief U.S envoy in talks to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons says his discussions with officials in Pyongyang covered a lot of ground.  He says he has great concern about moves to restart North Korea's main facility for producing material useable in nuclear weapons. VOA's Kurt Achin reports from Seoul.U.S.
U.S. AssistantSecretary of State Christopher Hill returned to South Korea Friday fromthree days and two nights in North Korea, where he says he discussedthe issue of nuclear verification with leaders there. NorthKorea submitted a declaration of its nuclear activities earlier thisyear as part of a broader six-nation deal aimed at ending its nuclearweapons capabilities altogether. Hill says he spent much of his visitdiscussing the North's refusal to agree to a set of steps forconfirming the accuracy of that document. "The discussions inPyongyang were quite substantive, we went into great detail on things,"he said. "They were quite lengthy... needless to say, there's been alot of problems in the six-party process, so indeed we did quite asubstantial review of activities in the last couple months." InAugust, President Bush decided not to remove North Korea from a StateDepartment list of nations suspected of sponsoring terrorism. Washington promised that step as a reward for submitting the nucleardeclaration, but says keeping that promise will not be possible unlessthe declaration is verified using internationally accepted methods,possibly including random inspections of nuclear sites. NorthKorea responded by reversing earlier steps it took to disable itsprimary nuclear facility at Yongbyon. Last week it ejectedinternational inspectors and their surveillance equipment from thesite. Pyongyang warned it would resume reprocessing of spent nuclearfuel into material useable for weapons by the end of this week. Hill says he cannot confirm whether that is actually happening. "Idon't have any update of what is going on in Yongbyon, obviously theissue in Yongbyon is an issue that has been of great concern to us andobviously that is one of the points that I conveyed," he said. Hillwas unwilling to provide details Friday about what sort of compromiseverification measures he may have proposed to North Korea. He says heneeds to brief other leaders in the six-nation process before fullydisclosing the content of his discussions. After briefing his Japanesecounterpart Friday night, Hill is scheduled to travel to Beijing onSaturday, then return to Washington to confer with Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice.