By Xinhua
Washington : A senior U.S. official said here Monday that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear reactor could be disabled by the end of the year.
    "If all goes well, we would hope that by the end of the calendar year '07 we will have the (Yongbyon) facility shut down and disabled, we would have a peace process — peace mechanism talks under way on the Korean Peninsula," chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said at a news briefing.
    Once the Yongbyon reactor is shut down, Hill said negotiators expect it to be made so it "cannot be brought back online without an enormous repair bill."
    Hill, who is also assistant Secretary of State, said shutting down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor "is just a first step of many steps…we have a lot of work to do."
    On the resumption of the six-party talks designed to the settlement of nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula, Hill said top ministers from the six parties — China, the United States, the DPRK, South Korea, Japan and Russia — could meet next month.
    "We would then hope to have a six-party meeting of some kind –head of delegations, informal, formal — probably in the second week in July," he said.
    Some time after that, and perhaps as early as the end of the month, there could be the six-party ministerial meeting, the U.S. official said.
    Hill had a two-day visit to Pyongyang last week in the latest U.S. effort to convince the DPRK to halt its nuclear weapons program. He is the first high-ranking U.S. negotiator to visit the DPRK in nearly five years.