SEOUL (Reuters) - A senior U.S. envoy traveled to North Korea on Wednesday in a bid to rescue a faltering nuclear disarmament deal and prevent Pyongyang from rebuilding a plant that made weapons-grade plutonium.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill's visit comes days after North Korea threatened to break away from the disarmament-for-aid package and try to start separating plutonium at its nuclear plant that was being taken apart under the deal.
A U.S. official said Hill drove across the heavily armed border on his way from Seoul to Pyongyang early on Wednesday.
Hill told reporters on Tuesday he would press Pyongyang to accept a system to verify statements it made about its nuclear program and answer U.S. suspicions of a secret project to enrich uranium for weapons.
"What they have been doing, obviously, goes against the spirit of what we have been trying to accomplish," Hill said on Tuesday. He did not say when he planned to return.
Minor activity has been spotted at the site of the North's 2006 nuclear test, on the east coast and away from Yongbyon, indicating the North may be working "to restore it", South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a government source as saying.
Smoke was seen rising from the site, probably from workers burning clothing and equipment, the source was quoted as saying. The South's spy agency could not confirm the report.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that the North was expelling U.N. monitors from its Yongbyon nuclear plant and planned to start reactivating it in days, rolling back the disarmament deal and putting pressure on Washington.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in October 2006, started to disable Yongbyon last November as part of the deal it reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Experts have said most of the disablement steps, which would take about a year to reverse, have been completed and North Korea cannot easily get back into the plutonium producing business.
The North has balked at U.S. demands about verification, fearing it to be too intrusive. Washington countered by making clear it would only remove Pyongyang from its "state sponsors of terrorism" list once the North agreed to a "robust" mechanism.
Once off the list, the reclusive and destitute North would be better able to tap into international finance and trade.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim; Editing by Alex Richardson)
High stakes on the high seas in Korean blockade (.. the first 5 words of this nip are revealing ..)
Confronting North Koreanvessels may involve Australia in a challenge to the very law of the sea, writes Christopher Kremmer. July 12 2003
Fresh from victory in Iraq, the Bush Administration appears to be gearing up for more high stakes adventures, this time on the high seas. But intercepting ships plying international waters - even rogue ships from North Korea - is a legal and logistical nightmare.
Washington's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), unveiled by President George Bush in a speech in Poland in May, aims to assemble a coalition of countries, including Australia, to "search planes and ships carrying suspect cargo and to seize illegal weapons or missile technologies".
Aggressive interdiction is expected to target suspect air and naval traffic leaving North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya.
Officials from 11 nations meeting in Brisbane this week agreed to begin joint military training exercises under the initiative. Exercises could begin within months.
The trigger for the initiative was an incident last December in the Arabian Sea involving a Cambodian-registered freighter, the So San. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783354653.html ///////////////////////// N Korea says South exercises could provoke war January 24, 2009
North Korea on Saturday denounced military exercises carried out by South Korea in early January as raising tensions that could lead to a war. It was the latest in a series of recent rhetorical attacks on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his administration by the communist North, which analysts suspect is trying hard to grab the attention of new U.S. President Barack Obama. "The Lee group's act of escalating the military provocations against the DPRK at a time when the inter-Korean confrontation is festering is as dangerous as adding fuel to the fire," the communist party's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by North Korea's news agency. http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/International/24-Jan-2009/N-Korea-says-South-exercises-could-provoke-war
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