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SEOUL: North Korea will likely begin disabling its nuclear facilities in mid-October under a disarmament-for-aid deal that should see the process completed by year's end, a news report said Sunday.
The disablement would take 45 days from the start until late November or early December, Seoul's Yonhap news agency said quoting unnamed officials.
The report came after top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said Washington was preparing to send a team of experts to North Korea this week ahead to discuss initiating the process.
Seoul's former unification minister Jong Se-Hyun, who met the North's chief nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan in Pyongyang during the inter-Korean summit last week, has said Kim wants to quickly get disablement started.
Under a six-nation deal announced Wednesday, North Korea will disable its five-megawatt plutonium producing reactor and two other facilities at Yongbyon and also declare all its nuclear programmes by December 31.
In return, the United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea will provide the energy-starved North with another 900,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid, in addition to 100,000 tonnes already sent.
As part of diplomatic rewards for the North's disablement, Washington has promised to work towards removing Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and eventually normalising diplomatic ties.
The United States has reiterated that normalisation would be possible only after North Korea is fully denuclearised.
It is not known how much nuclear weapons material or how many nuclear detonating devices the North has.
Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in October last year. - AFP/ac
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