US team reporting on N. Korean plant

US Congressional aides who went to North Korea’s disputed nuclear plant in the first visit by outsiders in more than a year, were in Seoul today to discuss with South Korea the communist country’s “nuclear deterrent”.

The two staff of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee were part of a team that visited the Yongbyon nuclear facility last week.

North Korea said on Saturday it showed them its “nuclear deterrent”, but it was unclear whether that meant an atomic bomb, its weapons-making technology or something else.

The two aides, Republican Keith Luse and Democratic colleague Frank Jannuzi, have so far refused to give details of what they saw, saying it would be premature to draw conclusions. They were the first outsiders to visit the Yongbyon facility since UN inspectors were ejected in late 2002.

The Washington Post reported the group had been shown recently reprocessed plutonium, the fuel for atomic weapons. The material had not been placed in an atomic bomb, and North Korea intimated it was willing to freeze its weapons development to resolve the crisis, the paper said.

The US aides were today meeting officials from South Korea’s Foreign Ministry and Unification Ministry, the arm responsible for North Korean affairs. The two are to leave South Korea tomorrow.

The visit comes as the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas push to restart another round of six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle any nuclear weapons and its weapons-development programme. A first round ended in Beijing in August without much progress.

North Korea has said it will freeze its nuclear programmes as a first step in resolving the nuclear dispute, if Washington lifts sanctions against the country, resumes shipments of heavy oil and takes North Korea off the US State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring countries.

Bristling at a freeze, the US has demanded that North Korea first verifiably begin dismantling its nuclear programs before receiving any concessions.

The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when Washington accused North Korea of running a secret nuclear programme in violation of a 1994 agreement.

A US-led international coalition cut off free oil shipments being supplied under the accord, and North Korea expelled UN inspectors from Yongbyon.

On January 10, 2003, North Korea quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a 1968 accord that tries to stem the spread of nuclear weapons.