US delegation visits N. Korean nuclear plant

An unofficial delegation of Americans who visited North Korea said today they had toured the country’s disputed Yongbyon nuclear facility.

The visit came as the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas were trying to arrange a new round of talks on ending the standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons programme.

The five-member American delegation was allowed to see all the sites they had requested, said one member, John Lewis, a Stanford University professor emeritus of international relations.

“We did go to Yongbyon,” Lewis said, referring to the nuclear facility which has been closed to outsiders since North Korea expelled UN inspectors at the end of 2002.

However, the Americans said they would not give any more details until two delegation members who are on the staff of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee had reported to Washington.

Others on the trip were Sig Hecker, a former director of the US government’s Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, and Jack Pritchard, a former staff member of the US National Security Council and a one-time State Department official.

Despite their official backgrounds, Lewis stressed that the trip was a private effort aimed at improving understanding of North Korean issues.

“We are a private delegation,” he told reporters at Beijing’s Capital Airport. “We were not there to negotiate. We were not there to be inspectors.”

Lewis said the delegation met North Korean military, foreign affairs, scientific and economic officials, but he would not say what they discussed.

The start of the visit on Tuesday coincided with the North’s announcement that it was willing to freeze its nuclear programme – an offer US Secretary of State Colin Powell called positive.

North Korea said it would not test or produce nuclear weapons and even stop operating its nuclear power industry ”as first-phase measures of the package solution”. The announcement said its proposal should be the focus of preparations for new talks.

The last round of six-nation Korean nuclear talks ended in August with neither a settlement nor a date for a new meeting. North Korea said last month that it wanted a new round of talks early this year.

The US has said it wants evidence that North Korea is beginning to dismantle its nuclear weapons programmes before it delivers any concessions.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles affairs with North Korea, says North Korea has at least three nuclear reactors.

Last year, it restarted a five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. An unfinished 50-megawatt reactor also stands at Yongbyon, and a 200-megawatt one is located just north-east of the site at Taechon, it says.

A US-led international consortium had been building two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors on the country’s east coast. But that project was suspended last month because of the nuclear standoff.