North Korea nuke talks may continue through Friday - sources
19/07/2007 11:27 BEIJING, July 19 (RIA Novosti) - Six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program could be prolonged for one more day over the need to coordinate the disarmament schedule, sources close to the talks said Thursday.
The current round of nuclear talks in Beijing is aimed at setting a date for the completion of the second phase of the February disarmament deal to permanently disable North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and to receive a full declaration of North Korea's nuclear arms activities.
The negotiations between envoys from China, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas began Wednesday in Beijing and were originally planned to last for two days, through Thursday, but the diplomats decided to conduct bilateral consultations before making a final statement, possibly Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, confirmed Wednesday that North Korea had closed all the facilities at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital Pyongyang, in addition to its only operating reactor, which was a source of weapons-grade plutonium.
The move has essentially finalized the first phase of the disarmament deal agreed February 13, when Pyongyang was promised economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for disabling its nuclear facilities.
Pyongyang has begun receiving 50,000 metric tons of heavy oil fuel from South Korea for its thermal power plants as an incentive for the reactor shutdown, and is to eventually receive a total of 950,000 metric tons from China, Russia and the U.S.
North Korea now expects Washington to strike it off the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, and to drop its "hostile" policies toward Pyongyang, and for Japan to improve ties with the regime, which it accuses of kidnapping its nationals in the 1970s-1980s.
The reclusive Communist regime also wants more assurances that South Korea will not deploy nuclear weapons.
Sources at the talks said North Korea had the capacity to receive about 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month, and it would take up to 19 months to complete the deliveries, although part of the fuel supplies could be substituted for other forms of humanitarian aid, including food supplies.
Delays in the implementation of the February 13 commitments were caused by a dispute with Washington over North Korea's frozen $25 million in a Macao bank, which finally reached Pyongyang in late June.
Pyongyang expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002, and conducted its first nuclear bomb tests last October.
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