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The chief U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill on Monday said North Korea may disable its nuclear facilities under a Feb. 13 six-nation agreement. ¡°If all goes well, we would hope that by the end of the calendar year '07 we will have the facility shut down and disabled,¡± Hill said in a press conference on his recent trip to Pyongyang. ¡°Once we get into the disabling phase¡¦ we could also do something that is called for in the September '05 agreement which is to begin a peace process on the Korean Peninsula.¡±
As for next year, ¡°what we would do is tackle endgame issues. And a major issue for the end game, of course, is the complete denuclearization which would be the abandonment of fissile materiel that the DPRK (North Korea) has already produced and finally -- and the abandonment of all weapons or explosive devices that they have and that would lead ¡¦ to a final cross-recognition or normalization in the region.¡± In other words, the U.S. is aiming to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem before Bush administration¡¯s term ends.
Asked if there was any discussion of North Korea¡¯s alleged uranium enrichment program, Hill said, ¡°We discussed everything and they acknowledge that this issue must be resolved to mutual satisfaction.¡±
If the current visit to North Korea by International Atomic Energy Agency officials yields good results, ¡°we will then look forward toward the shutdown beginning at some point after that. 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.¡±
The foreign ministers of the six countries will gather in Manila before or after the ASEAN Regional Forum, which is slated for Aug. 2 in the Philippine capital. ¡°If it's not Manila, it would be somewhere in Northeast Asia,¡± he added. But he said a visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ¡°never came up¡± during his talks with North Korean officials.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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