WAR.WIRE
US envoy visits NKorea for nuclear talks
 SEOUL, June 10 (AFP) Jun 10, 2008
 A senior US State Department official travelled to North Korea Tuesday across the heavily fortified inter-Korean border to discuss the communist state's disablement of its nuclear plants.

Sung Kim, director of the office of Korean affairs, crossed at the border village of Panmunjom, a US embassy spokesman said. He is due to return Wednesday to South Korea before heading back to Washington the following day.

Kim will talk to North Korean negotiators about work currently under way to disable the plants, the State Department has said.

The North, which staged an atomic weapons test in October 2006, is disabling its plutonium-producing reactor and other plants under a six-party deal reached in 2007 with the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Kim returned from a previous trip last month with more than 18,000 pages of operational records for the plants, raising hopes the North may be close to delivering a long-delayed declaration of its nuclear activities.

When the declaration is handed over, negotiators are expected to call a new session of six-party talks to discuss the final phase of denuclearisation.

The State Department says that Pyongyang has completed eight out of 11 activities to "disable" the plants -- make them unusable for at least a year.

But disputes over the declaration due last December 31 had blocked the start of the last phase -- the permanent dismantling of the plants and the handover of all nuclear material.

The North says it has slowed some disablement work because the energy aid promised in compensation -- equivalent to one million tons of heavy fuel oil -- has been slow in arriving.

Representatives of the five negotiating partners were to resume talks in Seoul later Tuesday to discuss details of energy aid. A full six-way energy meeting including North Korea is due in Panmunjom on Wednesday.

South Korea, the United States, China, and Russia have taken turns to provide about 40 percent of the aid in terms of value while Japan has yet to take part, according to Seoul officials.

Bilateral talks between North Korea and Japan are being scheduled in Beijing this week. Japan wants the North to come clean on the kidnapping of Japanese citizens during the Cold War era before it contributes to the energy aid.

In addition to the fuel aid North Korea would receive a lifting of US sanctions, the establishment of diplomatic relations with Washington and a formal peace treaty in return for total denuclearisation.