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Friday, Aug. 17, 2007

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VIENNA, Austria -- North Korea is cooperating with U.N. experts supervising the shutdown of its plutonium-producing reactor and monitoring its other nuclear facilities, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

In a report prepared for next month's meeting of the agency's 35-nation board, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said his experts have been able to monitor and verify the nuclear program's status "with the cooperation of the DPRK" - the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In Shenyang, China, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator said two days of technical talks on North Korea's nuclear program ended Friday with progress on the process of declaring and disabling the country's nuclear facilities.

"I think we now have the basis for achieving consensus on these issues and consensus on the way forward," Christopher Hill told reporters.

Hill said the meetings in northeastern China were "very businesslike, very specific" in discussing the technical issues.

Progress on resolving the dispute over North Korea's nuclear programs has quickened since a February agreement - which also involved Japan, South Korea, China and Russia - under which the North pledged to make a full declaration of all its nuclear programs and disable them in exchange for heavy fuel oil and other energy assistance.

North Korea shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor in July as part of that agreement. The sides now have to work out the technical details surrounding North Korea's full declaration of its nuclear programs, and a schedule and methods under which they would be disabled.

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Hill said the declaration and disablement of the facilities could go ahead at roughly the same.

"We won't wait for one to be completed before starting the other. So there will be considerable overlap as these processes go forward," he said.

Three more working groups - called for in the February agreement - also need to be held before a planned meeting of all nuclear negotiators from the six countries next month, Hill said.

One group will discuss normalizing ties between the U.S. and North Korea, the second will look at the same issue between North Korea and Japan and the third group will deal with peace and security mechanisms for northeast Asia.

Hill said that on Thursday the North Koreans expressed their willingness to resolve the country's alleged uranium enrichment program but did not get into specifics.

Washington accused North Korea in 2002 of embarking on such a program in violation of an earlier disarmament deal - touching off the latest nuclear crisis. The country tested a nuclear bomb in October last year.

Optimism has been building since North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor, with the leaders of the two Koreas to hold their first summit in seven years on Aug. 28-30.

No date or venue has been set for the discussions between the U.S. and North Korea on normalizing relations.

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