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TOKYO: US chief nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said on Saturday that North Korea's main nuclear facility will shut down by Monday.
"We understood (that it would shut down) this weekend, so I don't know whether it's Saturday, Sunday or Monday," said Hill in Tokyo.
"I do know it's very soon," he said.
Hill is in Tokyo ahead of a resumption of six-nation talks in Beijing next week on ending North Korea's nuclear programme.
UN nuclear inspectors were headed to North Korea on Saturday to inspect the Yongbyon nuclear reactor at the centre of its nuclear programme.
North Korea has agreed to shutdown the reactor as a first step to scrapping its nuclear programme in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
But Pyongyang had also said it would not budge until it received a first shipment of fuel oil as part of a disarmament deal reached in February. The shipment arrived in a North Korean port early Saturday.
Hill stressed that the shutdown of the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor was only the first step of the February deal.
"I also don't want people to think this shutdown is the biggest and only event," he told reporters. "It's just the first step."
The February deal was reached at six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
The talks are set to resume on Wednesday amid rising hopes that years of delicate international negotiations could finally get North Korea to abandon the atom bomb.
Hill said on Friday, after meeting with his Japanese counterpart Kenichiro Sasae here, that he expected the talks to be "smooth".
He also said the talks would touch on when to hold a meeting of foreign ministers from the six nations, possibly in August.
- AFP/so
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