North Korea offered yesterday to refrain from testing and producing nuclear weapons as a "bold concession" to rekindle six-nation talks on the standoff over its arms programs.
The move came as the US, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas scrambled to arrange a new round of negotiations on the topic, with South Korea and Russia saying they are unlikely this month.
In addition, a delegation of Americans left Beijing for North Korean yesterday to possibly tour the communist country's disputed nuclear plant at Yongbyon.
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity they were to stay in the North from yesterday to Saturday. Another pair of Americans, both congressional staffers, are also scheduled to visit Pyongyang this week.
The Yongbyon complex is at the heart of the standoff, and there has been no outside access to the facility since North Korea expelled UN nuclear inspectors at the end of 2002.
John Lewis, professor emeritus of international relations at Stanford University, said before leaving China that he hoped their trip would "clarify some issues" at stake in the nuclear dispute. But members of the group refused comment on reports that they might visit the Yongbyon complex.
North Korea has said before it is willing to freeze its "nuclear activities" in exchange for US aid and being delisted from Washington's roster of terrorism sponsoring nations.
Yesterday it specified it was "set to refrain from test and production of nuclear weapons and stop even operating nuclear power industry for a peaceful purpose as first-phase measures of the package solution."
In a commentary carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea called the offer "one more bold concession."
Washington has said it wants North Korea to verifiably begin dismantling its nuclear weapons programs before it delivers any concessions.
Yesterday, North Korea said its first-step proposal should be the focus of preparations for new talks.
"If the United States keeps ignoring our efforts and continues to pressurize the DPRK to scrap its nuclear weapons program first while shelving the issue of making a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK, the basis of dialogue will be demolished and a shadow will be cast over the prospects of talks," KCNA said.
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
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 northeast of the site at Taechon.
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 amid the nuclear standoff.
North Korea's neighbors were suspicious of the intent behind North Korea's other nuclear reactor and agreed to help build the light-water ones because they are more difficult to convert to weapons use. North Korea's offer to suspend all nuclear activities, even those for peaceful purposes could be aimed at easing those suspicions.
Chinese and Russian officials met in Moscow on Monday to try smoothing a way toward a new session of six-nation talks. A first round of talks in Beijing in August ended with little progress.
Russia and China are working on a compromise that assumes the liquidation of the North Korean nuclear program may take more than one year. Agreement to a "freeze" of nuclear work by Pyongyang would be the first step toward dismantlement, according to ITAR-Tass.
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