PANMUNJOM, SOUTH KOREA (AFP) — North Korea protested Thursday over what it said was the "very slow" pace of energy assistance it has received from six-party talks partners involved in an aid-for-disarmament deal.
The complaint emerged when the two Koreas met at a truce border village of Panmunjom, north of Seoul, to work out details on further energy aid to North Korea arranged under the agreement.
"Energy aid is related to our disabling (of the nuclear site in Yongbyon)," Hyun Hak-Bong, the North's deputy negotiator to six-party talks, told reporters.
"While the disabling has been completed for more than 80 percent, overall energy cooperation business is going very slowly -- at 30 percent to 36 percent... We hope this meeting can bear fruit."
Hyon's South Korean counterpart, Hwang Joon-Kook, said he would listen to the North's complaints and "try to come up with necessary plans."
South Korea is in charge of supplying energy aid to North Korea under the aid-for-disarmament deal, which was also endorsed by the US, China, Russia and Japan in February last year.
The five nations will resume discussions on the energy aid in Seoul Tuesday before holding a full meeting with North Korea in Panmunjom on Wednesday, the official said.
North Korea agreed last year to drop its nuclear programme in exchange for diplomatic and political incentives on top of energy aid equivalent one million tonnes of fuel oil.
Half of the energy aid should be in heavy fuel oil and the rest is in the other forms of energy aid, such as power plant construction materials or other facilities.
South Korea, the United States, China, and Russia have taken turns to provide about 40 percent of the pledged heavy fuel oil, while Japan has yet to take part citing Japanese civilians abducted by Pyongyang decades ago.
Seoul has supplied steel plates, apparently for use in patching up the North's decrepit power stations, to Pyongyang as part of energy aid promised under the nuclear deal.
South Korea's chief negotiator Kim Sook, who met his North Korean counterpart in Beijing last week, said Pyongyang was almost ready to deliver a full accounting of its nuclear activities.
But Pyongyang wants to link the timing to US concessions, including Washington taking the communist nation off a list of states that sponsor terrorism, according to Kim.
The New York Times reported Saturday that in documents presented to the US last month, the reclusive regime acknowledged that it had produced 37 kilogrammes (81 pounds) of plutonium.
The figure was less than the 40 to 50 kilos US intelligence officials had calculated but more than the 30 kilos Pyongyang originally admitted.
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