Nuclear envoy positive after North Korea visit

US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill ended a surprise trip to North Korea today, amid optimism that the visit heralded renewed progress in international efforts to denuclearise the communist country.

Hill, an assistant secretary of state, arrived in Pyongyang yesterday in the highest-level US visit to the North Korean capital since 2002.

Hill is Washington’s chief envoy to international talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme.

The US official departed from Pyongyang at about 11.15am local time (0315 BST), APTN reported from Pyongyang.

He met his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan and other officials during the landmark visit, which came amid hopes North Korea was on the verge of taking concrete steps to carry out its commitment to shut down its bomb-making nuclear reactor.

In a dispatch from Pyongyang, China’s Xinhua News Agency quoted Hill as saying at the airport prior to departure that he “had good discussions” with Kim and Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun.

“We want to get the six-party process moving,” Hill said in footage shot by APTN in Pyongyang.

He referred to talks involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US aimed at securing North Korea’s denuclearisation in exchange for economic and energy aid for the impoverished state.

The Bush administration initially preferred to meet the North with regional powers like China and Japan at the talks. But the US has been moving away from that limitation, holding meetings on the sidelines of summits and sending White House adviser Victor Cha to Pyongyang earlier this year.

Hill’s trip is the clearest indication yet of reaching out directly.

The visit, coming before North Korea makes good on its promise to shut down its nuclear reactor, appeared to demonstrate how much the Bush administration wants to achieve a breakthrough in the effort to dismantle the Pyongyang regime’s atomic weapons programme.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported Hill’s arrival in a terse, one-line dispatch. State television did not mention the trip on its evening broadcast.

In Washington, the State Department said Hill’s trip signalled it was the “right moment to do the full range of face-to-face consultations” with North Korea and to talk about moving the stalled process forward.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack had no details on Hill’s meetings.

US officials had previously rejected one-on-one diplomacy to avoid delivering North Korea a perk it sought, which indicates Hill’s trip is a vote of confidence in Pyongyang’s sincerity about keeping its promises under the six-nation deal.

The US and North Korea have been at odds since the 1950-53 Korean War and do not have formal diplomatic relations.

In February, North Korea committed itself to shut down its main nuclear fuel processing facility at Yongbyon, by mid-April after the US promised to free $US25m (€18.6 million) in allegedly illicit North Korean funds.

Enough progress had been made by Saturday for North Korean state media to announce that the country had invited the UN nuclear watchdog agency to send inspectors for a visit next week to discuss details of the reactor shutdown.

North Korea, which carried out its first nuclear test explosion in October last year, expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in 2002.

Despite promises by North Korea, the six-party process, which began in August 2003, has failed to achieve any concrete action by the country toward denuclearisation.

Hill said this week that he hoped the six-nation talks could reconvene sometime after July 4.

China, which sponsors the meetings, said that no date had been fixed.