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BEIJING : US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill called on North Korea Friday to accept the inspection and verification of its nuclear facilities as part of ongoing six-nation disarmament talks.
Upon arrival to Beijing, Hill met nuclear envoys from Japan and South Korea to discuss the six-party process on disarming North Korea, and on Saturday will meet China's envoy Wu Dawei, who has been coordinating talks.
"What we need to do is verify their nuclear declaration... we are certainly prepared to sit down with the six parties or directly with the North Koreans to hear their concerns on the (verification) protocol," Hill told journalists.
"We are prepared to complete our obligations as they complete theirs, but a declaration without a protocol is only half of the obligation."
In a landmark deal signed last year, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons in return for economic aid and diplomatic recognition.
As part of the deal, Pyongyang handed in a declaration of its nuclear programmes in June and began disabling its Yongbyon nuclear power plant where plutonium for an October 2006 atomic test, as well as an unknown number of bombs, is believed to have been produced.
But North Korea recently said it had stopped disabling its Yongbyon nuclear complex, and would consider rebuilding it, because Washington had failed to drop it from a terrorism blacklist as agreed to in last year's pact.
Hill did not comment on the disablement of Yongbyon and refused to discuss media reports that North Korea was also preparing to launch a ballistic missile test.
Washington has demanded strict verification of the declaration, including sampling of atomic materials and sites -- something Pyongyang rejects as a violation of its sovereignty.
"Publicly, what they talked about is that our proposal will allow us to make 'house-to-house searches'... of course that is not what our protocol would be doing or what we would be interested in doing," Hill said.
He added he currently has no plans to meet North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan during his stay in Beijing that ends Sunday, but that Pyongyang has been notified that the US is willing to talk.
Before leaving Seoul on Friday, South Korean envoy Kim Sook said the deadlock in the six-nation process needed to be broken quickly.
"It is an important moment, in which North Korea should resume the disablement measures," he said.
The six-nation talks -- involving China, the United States, North and South Korea, Russia and Japan -- began in 2003 with the aim of ending the communist state's nuclear activities.
- AFP /ls
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