North Korea and the five other nations involved in disarmament talks will this week resume negotiations on energy aid for Pyongyang in return for its promised nuclear shutdown, officials said Sunday. The meeting comes after the North agreed earlier this month to disable by December 31 its facilities producing material for atomic weapons at its Yongbyon complex.
North Korean officials and US nuclear experts have agreed on the details of the disablement procedures and Pyongyang will also start the process next month of declaring its nuclear programmes, Yonhap news agency said.
"We will discuss details to provide energy aid including heavy fuel oil and other materials and equipment to the North," a foreign ministry official told AFP. The meeting is due to take place on Monday and Tuesday at Panmunjom, a joint security area at the heavily fortified inter-Korean border. Under the six-nation nuclear disarmament deal agreed in February, the North agreed to disable its nuclear weapons programmes in return for one million tons of heavy fuel or equivalent energy aid.
Pyongyang has so far received 100,000 tons of oil - 50,000 each from South Korea and China.
The energy-starved communist country has asked for help to patch up its decrepit power plants. North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb in October last year.
The North shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and four other related facilities in July, and allowed inspectors from the UN atomic watchdog back into the country. If it goes on next year to scrap its plutonium stockpile and any nuclear weapons, it can expect normalised relations with the United States and Japan, a lifting of sanctions and a pact formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War.
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