Koreas Reportedly Agree on a Nuclear-Free Peninsula : Asia: Weapons accord comes just days before Bush visit. South is said to drop plans for military exercises with U.S.

Rivals South and North Korea reached full agreement today to make their heavily armed peninsula free of nuclear weapons, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

The agreement came less than a week before President Bush is to visit Seoul to discuss trade topics and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Experts believe the hard-line Communist state was capable of making a crude atomic bomb in a few years.

Today’s agreement at a border meeting was seen as a major step toward resolving nuclear disputes that threatened to cripple a historic reconciliation accord signed between the two Koreas on Dec. 13.

Yonhap quoted an unidentified government official as saying the agreement was reached after the two sides agreed to remove two disputed clauses. One was a North Korean demand for a permanent halt to annual U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, the other a South Korean demand that North Korea open its nuclear facilities to outside inspection by Jan. 31.

North Korea instead will issue a separate statement later giving a firm commitment to sign a safeguards agreement with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and allow inspections by neutral parties, Yonhap said.

South Korea will declare its willingness to call off this year’s “Team Spirit” military exercises with the United States as a step toward building confidence, it said.

According to Yonhap, the official South Korean news agency, the agreement requires both Koreas to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes only and bans them from producing, possessing or deploying nuclear weapons of any type.

It specifically bans construction of facilities capable of reprocessing nuclear waste and enriching uranium, a key clause that binds North Korea to abandon any plans to make atomic bombs, Yonhap said.

Nuclear reprocessing facilities are usually needed to produce plutonium, an essential material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. North Korea is suspected of building a nuclear reprocessing facility north of its capital.

Both Koreas also agreed to set up a joint watchdog body to monitor implementation of the agreement, expected to be formally adopted at the sixth round of talks between their prime ministers in February, Yonhap said.

South Korean officials had expressed concern that the nuclear dispute, if not resolved expeditiously, could jeopardize the Dec. 13 reconciliation accord that was hailed as a milestone in ending decades of hostilities.

Two delegates and three nuclear experts from each Korea attended today’s meeting, the third since last week, at the border village of Panmunjom. The meeting was closed to the press.

In a previous meeting, North Korea agreed to sign an international safeguards agreement allowing inspections “at the earliest possible date.”

The hard-line Communist nation also promised not to possess facilities for nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment, a pledge seen as indicating it would abandon plans to manufacture atomic bombs.