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WASHINGTON: Nuclear-armed North Korea has agreed to address questions over its controversial highly enriched uranium programme that had triggered the nearly five-year atomic standoff with Washington, US envoy Christopher Hill said Monday.
"We had a very good discussion about it, I am not going into the specifics of it except to say that they acknowledged that this issue must be resolved to mutual satisfaction," Hill told reporters in Washington on his return from a surprise visit to Pyongyang.
He was asked whether North Korean officials admitted to carrying out the programme during the 24-hour visit last week.
He stressed that the United States would not accept any final nuclear deal with North Korea unless the uranium enrichment issue was resolved.
Enriched uranium is used as fuel for nuclear reactors, but highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs.
Hill's North Korea visit was the first by a top US official since October 2002, when his predecessor James Kelly confronted the North with alleged evidence of a secret nuclear programme using highly enriched uranium.
That accusation based on intelligence information triggered off the latest nuclear crisis and the collapse of a 1994 bilateral accord to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive.
At first, the North acknowledged the programme but has since denied it.
Hill said the highly enriched uranium programme was critical to the declaration by North Korea of its nuclear activities under the second phase of a February 13 accord reached during six-party talks among the United States, China, Russia, the two Koreas and Japan.
"I wasn't there to negotiate HEU (highly enriched uranium programme)...but I was there to make very clear to them that as we go forward, we are going to have to resolve that issue," Hill told a media briefing about his visit.
Hill declined to provide details of his discussions on the sensitive subject and did not answer directly when asked whether he took what he heard from the North Koreans to be a formal acknowledgement of the existence of the programme.
"No. No, I take it for what it is," he said. "I mean, what I feel is important for us to do is to make clear we're not reaching any deal unless this is resolved," he said. We have to get clarity on this," he said.
During his two-day visit, Hill met with North Korea's Foreign Minister Pak Ui-Chun and Kim Kye-Gwan, its chief envoy to the six-nation forum that drew up the February 13 accord.
His North Korean trip followed an invitation by Pyongyang to the global atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to oversee the shutdown of the reclusive Stalinist state's key nuclear reactor under the first phase of the February pact.
Under that agreement, hammered out after a surge in tensions following the North's first nuclear weapons test last year, Pyongyang promised to shut down the Yongbyon plutonium plant in return for energy aid and diplomatic concessions.
The invitation for Hill's visit came after the settlement of a longstanding dispute about North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank under US-instigated sanctions.
Pyongyang had refused to comply with the denuclearization pact until it received more than 20 million dollars frozen at the bank and in a complex deal, the money was returned this week through US and Russian banking transactions.
IAEA inspectors are to fly to Pyongyang Tuesday to discuss with North Korea the shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon atomic reactor.
- AFP/ls/ir
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