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WASHINGTON : North Korea's shut-down of a key nuclear facility has brightened prospects for a first-ever ministerial meeting of six nations negotiating to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, the US State Department said Monday.
The six-party talks that began in 2003 among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan have been confined so far to the envoy level.
The State Department said that North Korea's weekend closure of the Yongbyon complex, which produces bomb-making plutonium, under the first phase of a February 13 accord clinched by the six parties would set the stage for talks at the level of ministers on the nuclear crisis.
"The trigger mechanism for a ministerial-level meeting has been completion of that first phase of the February 13th agreement and so we are well on our way to doing that now," department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
"It makes a ministerial-level meeting possible. We'll see exactly when in the coming weeks that's going to be. I don't have a date for you right now," he said.
The initial phase of the February accord included shutting down and sealing the Yongbyon complex under the supervision of the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in return for delivery of 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil to the impoverished, hardline communist state.
US envoy Christopher Hill, who will attend six-party talks in Beijing this week, would discuss possible scheduling of the ministerial meeting, McCormack said.
He did not rule out the possibility of such talks taking place in the next month.
Hill said last week that the talks could be held at the sidelines of a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Sydney in September. But a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, hinted Monday they could held in August.
"There are a number of different possibilities," McCormack said. "Nobody's settled on anything yet."
Hill is believed to have discussed the prospects for holding such a meeting with his Chinese, South Korean and Japanese counterparts and is expected to raise the issue with his North Korean and Russian opposites in Beijing.
The closure of the Yongbyon complex by North Korea, which tested an atomic bomb in October, is the first step by the reclusive state since 2002 toward ending its nuclear program.
The North agreed to the closure after it took return of funds frozen in its account in a Macau bank and after South Korea delivered 6,200 tonnes of fuel oil, the first part of the energy aid in compensation for the reactor closure.
A second shipment of 7,500 tons left South Korea for the North early Monday.
Separately, the State Department said in a statement Monday that North Korea had agreed to the IAEA's request for access to five facilities related to the production and separation of plutonium.
Four of the facilities are at Yongbyon -- a five megawatt reactor, a spent fuel reprocessing facility, a 50 megawatt reactor under construction and a fuel fabrication plant, the statement said.
The fifth facility, a 200-megawatt reactor under construction, is at Taechon, about 20 miles from Yongbyon.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that North Korea has shut down the five megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon complex, and intends to verify the status of the remaining four facilities by Wednesday, July 18," the statement said.
- AFP/ir
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