U.S.: N. Korea nuke shutdown to start
TOKYO, Japan (AP) — A team of U.S. experts will begin disabling North Korea’s nuclear facilities on Monday, the U.S. envoy said Saturday, marking a major concrete step by the communist country in scaling back its atomic program.
Top U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said in an interview that aired by public broadcaster NHK that the team would travel Sunday to North Korea’s main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of the capital, Pyongyang.
Hill said the group, which arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday, would then start disabling the country’s sole functioning reactor there and two other facilities on Monday.
By Monday morning, they will begin their work, Hill said, referring to the U.S. team that arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday. It’s a very big day because it’s the first time it’s actually going to start disabling its nuclear program, he said.
The North already shut down the reactor in July, and promised to disable it by year’s end in exchange for energy aid and political concessions from other members of talks on its nuclear program: the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
Disabling the reactor would mark a milestone in efforts to persuade the North to scale back its nuclear program. The country conducted its first-ever nuclear test in October of last year.
The North could still restart the reactor even after disablement, though Hill has said that process would take at least a year. The U.S. and other countries in the nuclear talks demand that Pyongyang completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
Hill said Friday that the United States was working with North Korean officials on the issue of the communist country’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
He said that the North must prove it is not engaged in terrorism before it will be removed from Washington’s blacklist.
We want all countries in the list to be removed but we want them to be removed by showing us that they are no longer engaged in the practice that put them on the list, Hill told reporters after arriving in Tokyo.
Taking North Korea off the terror list, long one of its key demands, was one of a series of economic and political concessions offered to the country to disable its nuclear reactor that produces plutonium for bombs. The list also includes Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba.
Japan is worried that the U.S. will remove North Korea from the list despite what Tokyo sees as the North’s refusal to satisfactorily address the abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s.
Hill said in Tokyo that the U.S. wants to see progress on the abduction issue.
I stressed to the North Koreans we want to see progress on this issue, said Hill, who met with his North Korean counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, in Beijing earlier this week.
We don’t want a situation where denuclearization is achieved while some relations among states are allowed to deteriorate, Hill said after meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae. Sasae said Hill assured him that the U.S. will continue to support Japan on the issue.
North Korea admitted in 2002 that it kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens and later sent five of them home, saying the remaining eight were dead. North Korea insists the matter is settled, but Japan has demanded proof of the deaths and says more of its citizens may have been taken.
The North was put on the terror list for its involvement in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean jetliner that killed all 115 people aboard.
The designation effectively bars the North from taking out low-interest loans from U.S.-controlled international lenders. E-mail to a friend
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