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A team of U.S. envoys is scheduled to return to Seoul on Saturday after a three-day trip to North Korea, where they put final touches on the content and format of Pyongyang's declaration of its plutonium-based program and alleged uranium-enrichment program and cooperation with Syria.
The U.S. team, led by Sung Kim, director of the State Department's Office of Korean Affairs, will cross the border into the South carrying several boxes of sensitive documents pertinent to Pyongyang's plutonium-producing activities, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry. The documents will be sent to Washington, where U.S. officials will hold them up to close scrutiny.
Officials and analysts in Seoul hailed the document transfer as "one of the biggest achievements" from diplomatic efforts by the Bush administration to resolve the nuclear dispute before it leaves office early next year.
It will take several weeks for U.S. officials to review the documents to verify whether Pyongyang is telling the truth about its nuclear activities, but a diplomatic source here said the North or the United States is expected to present the main declaration documents to China, the host of the six-nation talks, in the next two weeks to resume the multilateral negotiations.
"The next round of the six-party talks is likely to be held early next month," a senior South Korean official said, noting that it would focus on providing a roadmap for the final phase of the disarmament process, including a removal of the North from the U.S. blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.
The United States has committed to take the North off the list of countries supporting terrorism and stop applying the Trading with the Enemy Act, which restricts trade with the communist country.
North Korea has long called for lifting of the sanctions, reportedly promising that it would blow up the cooling tower of its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon within a day after the United States removes the country from the terrorism blacklist, in a largely symbolic display of its anti-nuclear determination.
"The transfer of the (plutonium-related) documents shows the 'sincerity' of North Korea's commitment to the denuclearization process," said a senior official at the Foreign Ministry.
"It marks significant progress in the denuclearization process because it would disable the North's nuclear facilities," said Hong Hyon-ik, a research fellow at Seoul's private Sejong Institute. "It would take more than a year to reactivate the nuclear plants when disablement is completed. It is a bigger achievement than the 1994 deal that just froze the nuclear facilities," he said.
Under a landmark agreement reached on Feb. 13 last year at the six-nation nuclear talks, North Korea agreed to disable all of its existing nuclear facilities in exchange for 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent energy aid. The accord also called for the United States to remove North Korea from the terrorism blacklist and end its restrictions under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Fulfilling its part of the accord, North Korea completed the first phase of the disarmament in July by shutting down and sealing its plutonium-producing reactor at the country's main nuclear complex in Yongbyon.
The North also began in November disabling the reactor, fuel reprocessing plants and a fuel fabrication plant under the supervision of U.S. inspectors. Responding to Pyongyang's move, its negotiating partners have begun providing fuel aid to the energy-starved North.
But the North had failed to finish the second phase of the disarmament deal that called for a declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of last year, delaying the third and final phase of disabling the atomic weapons programs.
"With the transfer of the documents, the final phase of the denuclearization process could begin soon," the ministry official said.
Fueling the sense of optimism, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said North Korea and the United States are expected to establish liaison offices in each other's capitals to facilitate the denuclearization process and handle other bilateral issues.
The offices, if set up, will monitor North Korea's implementation of its denuclearization obligations under an aid-for-dismantlement deal reached last year, he said.