U.S. backs plan to disable North Korean nuclear sites

The United States said Tuesday that it had endorsed a plan for disabling North Korea’s nuclear facilities by year’s end, and the U.S. negotiator said he believed the other countries involved would give their OK as well.

Negotiators from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea reached tentative agreement Sunday in Beijing but said the plan required further consideration by their governments. The document is supposed to be a framework for the denuclearization process, which North Korea already had committed to undertake.

Christopher Hill, a U.S. assistant secretary of State, said he had been in touch with several of the other negotiators, and added, “I believe the other parties are ready to sign on.”

Specifics of the document were not disclosed, but Hill said he expected China to release a statement with particulars within two days.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with President Bush on Tuesday. “We have conveyed to the Chinese government our approval for the draft statement,” McCormack said.

“There are some undertakings in this agreement which will involve, for instance, the issue of various parties, mainly the U.S., participating very heavily in the issue of actual disablement,” Hill said. “We are also, I think, reaching a point where we are getting into some very serious implementation measures. It’s not just something on paper anymore.”

Negotiators have been trying to push forward with the February pact under which the five countries in talks with the North agreed to provide Pyongyang with 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil, or the monetary equivalent in other aid and assistance. In return, North Korea agreed to shut down the reactor at Yongbyon, which it did in July, and declare and ultimately dismantle all its nuclear programs.

North Korea is expected to provide a full list of its nuclear programs before year’s end. The U.S. wants the dismantling to be so thorough that a nuclear facility could not be made operational for at least 12 months.

North Korea reportedly wanted the joint statement to include a reference to its goal of being removed from a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Hill indicated that was possible, but only after North Korea had lived up to its commitments.

Separately, the leaders of the two Koreas began talks today at the first summit between the countries in seven years.

According to South Korean pool reports, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that he was concerned about flooding in the North, where rains this summer left about 600 people dead or missing and tens of thousands homeless.

Before talks began in Pyongyang, Roh presented DVDs to Kim, a known cinema buff with a vast film library.