North Korea set to shut atom plant in weeks: US envoy

The top US nuclear envoy, just back from a rare visit to North Korea, said on Friday Pyongyang was ready to disable its nuclear reactor in weeks and meet pledges it made in a disarmament deal.
However, a North Korean diplomat in Vienna raised the prospect of further delays in implementing the February 13 disarmament-for-aid deal, saying an impasse over North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank had still not been resolved.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the highest-ranking US State Department official to visit the reclusive state in nearly five years, said talks during his brief surprise trip to Pyongyang were detailed and positive.
"The DPRK indicated that they are prepared, promptly, to shut down the Yongbyon facility as called for in the February agreement," Hill told a news conference in Seoul. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the communist state's full name, has long sought direct contact with Washington. Hill said he expected UN nuclear inspectors would visit North Korea next week to help draw up plans for the reactor shut down as a part of the February deal among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. "The week after that, or two weeks after that, I think we can expect a shut down of this facility," Hill later said in an interview with broadcaster CNN.
The Soviet-era Yongbyon reactor - the North's source for weapons-grade plutonium - and nearby reprocessing facility are at the heart of its nuclear arms programme. "Once they get their money ... they are set to shut it down and they confirmed that to me today in Pyongyang," Hill said, adding the cash dispute should be settled quickly.
Hill met North Korea's Foreign Minister, Pak Ui-chun, and nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan. He did not seek a meeting with supreme leader Kim Jong-il. Washington said Hill's trip to Pyongyang was meant to test "the proposition that North Korea has made that strategic decision to dismantle ... and give up their nuclear programmes".
At the last high-level visit of a State Department official, in 2002, envoy James Kelly confronted the North with evidence Washington said indicated a covert uranium enrichment programme. The crisis following that confrontation led Pyongyang to expel UN nuclear inspectors and culminated in the communist state's first nuclear test last October.
North Korea said last weekend it would re-admit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, as required under the February accord. That followed signs that most of the $25 million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank for nearly two years for suspected links to illicit activity by Pyongyang was making its way back to the North via a bank account in Russia.
A North Korean diplomat in Vienna, home of the IAEA, said Pyongyang had yet to receive the money and was not yet ready to give the go-ahead for the inspectors' visit. Confusion over the funds' whereabouts was highlighted on Friday when Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Russian official as saying the $25 million transfer would be completed on Monday.
He spoke hours after a deputy foreign minister said this would be done already on Friday. The New York Times reported that the Bush administration was considering authorising Hill to offer to buy nuclear equipment that the secretive state acquired from a Pakistani scientist to enrich uranium into nuclear bomb-grade material. Hill said he had nothing to substantiate the report, adding Washington wanted the North to come clean on uranium enrichment.