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SEOUL - It took almost four years of negotiations, 50,000 tonnes of oil and a complex multinational banking deal to get North Korea to announce the closure of its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.
Now comes the hard part.
All six countries which began negotiating in August 2003 -- the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- say their ultimate aim is a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
But the path to that goal is strewn with potential pitfalls.
The US State Department said Saturday it has been told by the North that Yongbyon's reactor and other facilities have been closed. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are in the country to verify the shutdown.
The closure of Yongbyon, which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium, would be "a significant accomplishment," said Peter Beck, Northeast Asia director of the International Crisis Group.
"The question is where we go from here," he told AFP late last week. "I'm not sure if the players have a really clear road map. That will be a challenge."
The closure, to be rewarded with 50,000 tonnes of oil from South Korea, is the first step in a six-nation February deal.
Progress was blocked for months by a dispute over North Korean funds frozen in Macau over US claims they were the proceeds of illegal activities. In an extraordinary development, the New York Federal Reserve helped return the allegedly dirty cash to Pyongyang via Russia.
The North will receive another 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent aid, plus major diplomatic benefits and security guarantees, if it goes on to declare all nuclear programmes and permanently disable all nuclear facilities.
The US and its partners say "facilities" must include weapons and plutonium stockpiles. The North tested its first atomic bomb last October and is thought to have several more.
Yongbyon's shutdown stops the North producing any more plutonium to swell its existing stockpile -- estimated by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security at 46-64 kilos (101-141 pounds).
Some 28-50 kilos of this are estimated to have been separated, enough for about five to 12 nuclear weapons, the institute said in February.
But the February pact makes no specific mention of existing weapons.
"Certainly there are a lot of ambiguities in the deal," said Beck. "The devil will be in the details."
Six-way talks resume on Wednesday to try to settle some of those details.
Baek Seung-Joo of the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA) said the North sees the agreement as just referring to the reactor shutdown, not the dismantlement of atomic bombs.
"The US and other six-party members need a separate accord on the dismantlement of nuclear weapons -- a tougher task to achieve," he said.
The shutdown, he said, is a step forward but there is still a long way to go. "They are just on the starting line. It will take more time to work out a road map."
Beck said that if the North issues a full list of remaining facilities, "it would really tell me that they are serious about moving the process forward."
This, he said, should include the status of an alleged highly enriched uranium (HEU) programme, separate from the plutonium operation.
US allegations in 2002 of a secret HEU programme, denied by the North, led to the suspension of fuel oil shipments and the collapse of a deal which had kept Yongbyon shut since 1994.
"It's highly doubtful if the HEU programme is operating but clearly they were up to no good, buying components from Pakistan," said Beck.
Asked whether the North will ever scrap its bombs, Beck said: "I'm not sure (leader) Kim Jong-Il is capable of it. But we will not know till we try."
KIDA's Baek said that "without great benefits such as full (US) diplomatic recognition, North Korea will not easily abandon nuclear weapons."
The pact envisages this, given full denuclearisation.
"Along with security guarantees, diplomatic recognition is their final goal," Baek said.
Analyst Andrei Lankov wrote earlier this year that the North can shut down facilities because its existing bombs are an adequate deterrent -- and these would not be scrapped.
For without such weapons to pressure the international community, "North Korea would be just another dirt-poor, Third-World tyranny." - AFP/ir
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