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US negotiator heading to N Korea US envoy in crucial N Korea trip
(1 day later)
The US is to send a top nuclear negotiator to North Korea for talks over its announcement that it will restart its nuclear programme. A top US negotiator has arrived in North Korea to salvage a nuclear deal, weeks after Pyongyang began to reinstate its plutonium programme.
The US envoy, Christopher Hill, will also visit the South Korean capital, Seoul, during the trip. Christopher Hill is expected to offer a compromise, after the initial deal fell apart amid wrangling over how much verification the North had to give.
The visit is designed to get talks to end North Korea's nuclear programme back on track, says a US spokesman. The isolated state had disabled some of its facilities as part of the deal.
North Korea had agreed to end its nuclear programme but has made moves to restart plutonium reprocessing. Mr Hill's visit comes amid rumours that the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, is seriously ill.
A six-nation disarmament-for-aid package had pulled together the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan in a deal aimed at ending North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Analysts say the confusion over who is running North Korea could affect the negotiations.
But that agreement appears to be in trouble after North Korea removed seals and surveillance from part of its main nuclear plant in the capital, Pyongyang. Uncertain outcome
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have also been denied access to the facility. For years Pyongyang has been locked in talks over its nuclear ambitions with the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
Dispute A deal was agreed last year and Pyongyang began dismantling its facilities in November 2007.
Pyongyang had begun dismantling the reactor in November 2007. Mr Hill is on his third trip to Pyongyang since last December
It was expecting to be removed from a US list of terrorism sponsors after submitting a long-delayed account of its nuclear facilities to the international talks in June, in accordance with the disarmament deal it signed in 2007. It handed over documentation on the programme in June this year, but Washington demanded further verification of the claims before removing the North from its list of states sponsoring terrorism.
It also blew up the main cooling tower in a symbolic gesture of its commitment to the process. Pyongyang refused and has now made moves to restart its plutonium reprocessing activities - which experts believe could be up and running within months.
However, the US said it would not remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism until procedures by which the North's disarmament would be verified were established. An unnamed Washington official told the Associated Press that Mr Hill would offer Pyongyang less stringent verification requirements in return for removing the state from the terrorism list on a provisional basis.
The North has been locked in international discussions for years over its nuclear ambitions. The official said Mr Hill would run through the new verification procedure word-by-word to try to tackle any concerns the regime might have.
North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty. Mr Hill was circumspect when asked by reporters how likely he was to seal a deal.
"I can't really tell you what is going to happen in Pyongyang," he said.
"Obviously, we are going to try to get through phase two... namely the need to have an agreement on what verification will look like."
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, says it is unclear whether the North Koreans have a substantive disagreement with the Americans or if they have decided that President Bush's successor might be more amenable.