North Korea may start shutting reactor within 30 days: report

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North Korea may start shutting reactor within 30 days: report


WASHINGTON - North Korea told a visiting US delegation that it would miss Saturday's deadline to begin shutting down its main nuclear reactor but could start within 30 days, NBC News reported Wednesday.

The US delegation believes it convinced the Stalinist regime it would soon receive funds in a frozen Macau bank account, which had been an obstacle to North Korea's agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear weapons program, the US television network said.

The promise led North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan to tell the US delegation that it could start closing the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and allow UN atomic inspectors back in within 30 days, NBC said.

Former UN ambassador Bill Richardson, who led the US delegation in Pyongyang, will announce the agreement Wednesday in Seoul when he meets there with the US pointman on North Korea negotiations, Christopher Hill, NBC said.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier Tuesday that Macau's monetary authority had agreed to open the accounts to their owners.

In the first phase of a six-country agreement reached in February, Pyongyang had agreed to shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor by this Saturday in exchange for badly needed fuel oil.

However, North Korea had refused to take the key step until it received $25 million in funds frozen in the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau, after Washington blacklisted the bank for allegedly laundering illicit funds.

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Didn't the deadline already pass?

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South Korea urges North on nuclear deal

SEOUL - South Korea urged North Korea Thursday to honor an international disarmament deal and quickly shut down its nuclear reactor, saying this would unlock international support for economic aid.

Seoul made the appeal as economic talks in Pyongyang with its impoverished communist neighbor went into a second day, according to pool reports.

"The quick implementation of the February 13 agreement is a short-cut to draw firm international support for inter-Korean economic cooperation," said South Korea's delegation chief Chin Dong-Soo.

There was no news on whether South Korea would resume its desperately-needed rice aid conditional on nuclear progress.

The North opposes any linkage. "We work on the strict principle of the separation of politics and economics," Kwon Ho-Ung, chief cabinet councilor, said in a welcoming speech Wednesday.

Seoul suspended its regular annual shipment of 400,000 tons of rice after the North's missile tests last July. Relations worsened further after its October nuclear test but improved when the North returned to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

North Korean officials say their country faces a shortfall of one million tons of food this year, according to the World Food Program.

Under the first phase of the February deal the North was supposed by April 14 to have shut down and sealed the Yongbyon reactor, which produces the raw material for plutonium to make bombs, in the presence of UN atomic inspectors.

It missed the deadline because of delays in freeing up 25 million dollars which had been frozen in a Macau bank at US instigation since 2005.

The United States said the money was made available last week but there has been no word on when or how the cash transfer will be made.

South Korea's deputy chief nuclear negotiator Lim Sung-nam was to visit China Thursday for talks with his counterpart on ways to move the stalled nuclear talks forward, Yonhap news agency said.

The opening of two railway lines across the heavily-fortified border is also on the agenda.

South Korea wants railway test runs sometime in May, according to the pool reports quoted by Yonhap, but is awaiting security guarantees. The North abruptly cancelled test runs in May last year.

A deal under which the South would swap raw materials for natural resources will also be discussed.

In 2005 South Korea agreed to provide the North with materials worth 80 million dollars to help it produce clothing, footwear and soap.

In return, the North was to provide the South with minerals such as zinc and magnesite after mines were developed with South Korean investment.