N.Korea to cooperate on nuclear verification

WASHINGTON - North Korea has agreed to cooperate fully on verifying its nuclear declaration, a U.S. official said on Tuesday as he displayed some of the 18,822 documents Pyongyang has given Washington about its plutonium program.
Obtaining the documents last week was a victory for the Bush administration, which has struggled to persuade the secretive communist nation to produce a 'complete and correct' declaration of its nuclear programs that was due on Dec. 31.
The declaration is part of a broader multilateral deal under which North Korea, which detonated an atomic device in October 2006, would abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.
Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department's top Korea expert, told reporters that U.S. and North Korean officials had productive talks about elements of the declaration, which Pyongyang is required to make under the so-called six-party agreement.
The agreement was struck by the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
'We had very detailed, substantive discussions with DPRK (North Korea) interlocutors from the Foreign Ministry, as well as the General Department of Atomic Energy, on all aspects of their declaration,' Kim said.
'The North Koreans acknowledged the requirement for verification and indeed agreed to cooperate fully with verification activities,' he said as he held up a sheaf of documents about North Korea's plutonium-related activities.
He said he hoped U.S. experts would have a preliminary assessment of the documents -- which are written in Korean and filled seven boxes -- in a few weeks.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill, the top U.S. negotiator with North Korea, could meet with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts early next week for three-way talks. Earlier, Kim had suggested all six nations might hold talks but a U.S. official said he was referring only to those three.
North Korea is expected to submit a 40- to 50-page report on its nuclear activities in the next few weeks to China, the host of the six-way nuclear disarmament talks, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Saturday, citing diplomatic sources.
However, Kim told reporters that it was 'too early to tell whether it would be ready any time soon.'
Under a face-saving compromise discussed earlier this year, Pyongyang might detail its plutonium program in the declaration and address U.S. concerns about its suspected uranium enrichment and proliferation activities in a separate way.
According to people briefed on the plan, which has been discussed by U.S. and North Korean officials, the United States would put forward its concerns on those two issues and North Korea would then 'acknowledge the U.S. concerns.'
Skeptics have questioned whether the United States should accept what this would yield as the 'complete and correct' accounting North Korea has promised.