NKorea reports progress in US nuke talks amid proliferation claims
SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea on Thursday reported progress in talks with a US team aimed at restarting a stalled nuclear disarmament deal, as US officials accused Pyongyang of sharing atomic technology with Syria.
The team led by US State Department official Sung Kim spent two days in Pyongyang from Tuesday discussing the North's promised nuclear declaration, an issue that has held up progress on the landmark six-nation pact for months.
"The negotiations proceeded in a sincere and constructive manner and progress was made there," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the communist state's Korean Central News Agency.
Kim told reporters in Seoul: "I will just tell you that we had a good visit. We had a very substantive discussion."
Apparent US concessions over the contents of the declaration, which is supposed to disclose all the North's nuclear activities, have come under fire from conservatives in Washington.
In Washington on Thursday, lawmakers were briefed by US officials behind closed doors on charges that North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear reactor at a site destroyed by an Israeli raid in September.
US officials also gave lawmakers a video presentation that included photographs of the Syrian nuclear facility, a top US official said on condition of anonymity.
One lawmaker present at the briefing said Pyongyang must reply to the allegations it helped Syria build the reactor, before it can be removed from the US blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.
"We would expect to have good, clear, verifiable information from the countries that are involved before steps like that would be taken by the administration," Representative Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.
"This is a serious proliferation issue both in the Middle East and the country that may be involved in Asia," Hoekstra said.
Syria has denounced the charges, with its ambassador to the United States linking the supposed US evidence to Washington's weapons-of-mass-destruction case for invading Iraq.
It was unclear how the Washington briefing would affect the diplomatic process, but after a tough stance early in his first term, US President George W. Bush is now pushing to resolve the nuclear issue before he leaves office next January.
In last year's six-nation deal, the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia agreed to grant North Korea energy aid and major diplomatic and security benefits in return for full denuclearisation.
The United States had also offered to remove Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of the agreement.
The North has begun disabling its plutonium-producing plants but has not produced the declaration promised by the end of 2007. It said it delivered the documentation last November, but the United States called it incomplete.
In particular, Washington said Pyongyang must allay suspicions about an alleged secret uranium enrichment programme and suspected proliferation. The North denies both activities.
According to numerous reports, the North in a face-saving gesture will now merely "acknowledge" US concerns about uranium enrichment and proliferation in a confidential document to the United States.
It would detail its admitted plutonium operation, which is based at the Yongbyon complex, in a formal declaration to talks host China.
In upbeat comments Wednesday, South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said the "last work" on getting the declaration was underway and the six-party talks could resume next month.
An unidentified senior US official told The Washington Post the timing of the Washington briefing was meant to torpedo any deal with North Korea to remove it from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"Making public the pictures is likely to inflame the North Koreans," the official said. "And that's just what opponents of this whole arrangement want, because they think the North Koreans will stalk off."
