By KUNA,
Tokyo : North Korea’s declaration detailing its nuclear programs will not include information about nuclear weapons, the top US negotiator said Tuesday, Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported in a dispatch from the Chinese capital.
Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters in Beijing that the document will be confined to North Korea’s nuclear materials and facilities, according to Kyodo.
“The weapons are to be determined at a subsequent phase. The declaration, at this point, the purpose of it, is to list all of their nuclear materials and all their nuclear facilities and programs,” Hill was quoted as saying.
“The North Koreans acknowledged that we have to deal with the weapons, but not in this phase,” he added.
Details of North Korea’s weapons program are veiled in secrecy, but in October 2006, the country announced it had successfully carried out its first test of a nuclear bomb.
Pyongyang is expected to hand over its long-delayed declaration to the Chinese government on Thursday.
It was scheduled to be submitted at the end of last year as part of an agreement under the six-party talks to get North Korea to disable its nuclear programs in return for fuel aid and diplomatic concessions.
But Pyongyang missed the deadline because of a dispute over what should be included in the declaration. The six-party talks involve the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia.
Once the list is submitted, Washington is to respond by beginning steps to cross North Korea off its blacklist of terrorist sponsors, a longstanding demand by Pyongyang. North Korea is then expected to destroy the cooling tower in the Yongbyon nuclear complex that is currently being disabled under the six-party deal.
The nuclear complex is located about 90 kilometers north of the capital Pyongyang.