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US delegation members arrive in S.Korea after DPRK visit

PLA Daily 2004-01-12

SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Two delegates of a US delegation which recently concluded a five-day visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) arrived in South Korea for a trip, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

Keith Luse and Frank Janizzu, assistant respectively for Co-Chairman of US Senate Foreign Relation Committee Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden, arrived at Incheon International Airport Sunday afternoon.

The two congressmen were reportedly to meet South Korean presidential aids and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade during their stay here.

Upon their arriving at the airport, they refused to answer any question raised by reporters, only saying that press reports so far about the delegation's DPRK visit were all "speculative", according to Yonhap.

The DPRK said Saturday that the US unofficial delegation saw the country's "nuclear deterrent" during the visit from Jan 6-10 to Yongbyon, 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang.

The US delegation's access to Yongbyon was the first by outside visitors since the DPRK expelled UN nuclear inspectors at the end of 2002 amid confrontation with the United States over the nuclear issue.

The nuclear issue began in the fall of 2002 when US officials said the DPRK had admitted running a secret uranium-based nuclear program.

The United States subsequently halted fuel oil shipments to the DPRK, and Pyongyang expelled UN nuclear inspectors and quit the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Aiming to solve the nuclear issue, China, the US, the DPRK, Russia, South Korea and Japan held first round of multilateral nuclear talks in Beijing last year. And the concerning parties are trying to make the new round of such talks open as soon as possible.

The DPRK on Tuesday said it is set to refrain from test and production of nuclear weapons and stop even operating nuclear power industry for peaceful purpose as first-phase measures of the package solution to solve the nuclear issue.

The package solution which the DPRK proposed requests Washington to take measures to remove the DPRK from its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations, resume provision of heavy fuel oil, normalize relations and provide economic assistance at the same time the DPRK scrapes its nuclear weapon program.