A US envoy who will visit North Korea this week said Tuesday it must make a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear programmes to get stalled disarmament talks moving. Sung Kim, director of the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, said he would spend two or three days in Pyongyang for talks aimed at making progress in six-nation negotiations.
The North missed a December 31 deadline, set by a six-party deal, to declare all its nuclear activities. It says it submitted a list in November but the US insists it must account fully for a suspected secret highly enriched uranium weapons programme.
Kim arrived in South Korea Tuesday for consultations and will go on to China Wednesday and Pyongyang the following day. Asked if any agreement by North Korea to discuss the uranium programme would be an acceptable first step in a declaration, he replied: "No, the requirement is for a complete and correct declaration of all of its nuclear programmes."
Pyongyang blames the current deadlock on its negotiating partners for failing to honour their side of the bargain - especially Washington for not starting to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The US insists the nuclear list must come first. "The United States stands ready to fully discharge its obligations in the second phase, should North Korea discharge its obligations," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday in Washington.
North Korea is also working to disable its plutonium-producing atomic plants as part of the deal involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia.
Kim declined comment on South Korean media reports that it has slowed this process down. The reports quoting diplomatic sources said the process of removing fuel rods at the Yongbyon complex had slowed to around 30 a day from an expected 80-100, meaning it could take weeks longer than expected.
The North, which staged a nuclear test in October 2006, warned in January that it could slow down the work in response to what it sees as the slow delivery of compensation. Under the six-party deal the North was due to receive up to one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid, but only around 200,000 tons has so far been shipped.