According to a South Korean government source, the U.S. has decided to allow the North to "indirectly acknowledge" its uranium enrichment program and nuclear proliferation to Syria, but the North must declare its weapons-grade plutonium.

This means the U.S. wants the North to document the total amount of plutonium, the number of nuclear warheads, and the logbook of the Yongbyon atomic reactor and nuclear reprocessing facility and their operation.

A U.S. delegation led by Sung Kim, director of the Korean Affairs office at the U.S. State Department, arrived in South Korea on Monday afternoon before traveling overland to the North on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear declaration.

Kim's delegation, which includes a nuclear expert, will travel to Pyongyang through the truce village of Panmunjeom. It will stay in Pyongyang for about two days to fine-tune the terms of the declaration.

The Tokyo Shimbun on the same day said, "Last December, North Korea told the U.S. that the total amount of plutonium it had extracted was about 30 kg, and that it spent about 18 kg in nuclear development and about 6 kg in the nuclear test in October 2006."

But Cheon Seong-whun, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said, "The total amount of plutonium North Korea has so far extracted is estimated at 30 to 50 kg. The 30 kg the North has claimed is the minimum estimated amount. Given that each warhead needs about 4 kg of plutonium, it will be possible to have a correct knowledge of the total number of nuclear weapons the North has produced only if its plutonium storage is accurately verified."

(englishnews@chosun.com )