By DPA
Seoul : Nuclear experts from the United States, Russia and China are due to head into North Korea Tuesday for talks on the next phase of nuclear decommissioning, a delegation head said Monday.
Sung Kim, in charge of the US delegation, as Korean affairs leader at the State Department, told reporters in Seoul that the experts would be looking at nuclear facilities due to be decommissioned.
The trip follows agreement by North Korea in talks with the US to disclose all its controversial nuclear activities by the end of the year and to permanently disable its nuclear facilities.
Sung Kim said the US delegation, travelling overland, would meet up with their Russian and Chinese counterparts inside North Korea, and all would be visiting the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which North Korea closed down in mid-June in return for initial oil deliveries.
The State Department said the three delegations had been invited by North Korea “to come up with an understanding on the specifics of disablement and how it will be conducted.”
The closing down of the facilities and next disarmament phases are part of agreements reached last February in the six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, the US and Russia.
Meanwhile, Chun Young Woo, South Korea’s chief negotiator at the six-nation talks, said he hoped the North Korean nuclear programme would be eradicated by the end of next year.
The main challenge at the moment, he told a conference in Seoul, was to follow up the February agreements with “a more ambitious roadmap” that included getting rid of all North Korea’s fissile material and nuclear warheads.
Opposition candidate Lee Myung Bak, regarded by many as next South Korean president, told the conference that the Korean peninsula was at a “critical crossroads.”
Once North Korea finally ends its nuclear programme, it could expect a comprehensive aid package with the aim of raising its per capita income to $3,000 a year within a decade.