BEIJING, June 21 (RIA Novosti) - Washington's top nuclear negotiator has arrived in North Korea's capital for talks aimed at moving negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament forward, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said Thursday.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the most senior U.S. diplomat to pay an official visit to the reclusive Communist state since late 2002, will meet with his North Korean counterpart in the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, the U.S. State Department said earlier.
Seoul's Yonhap agency said Hill left for the North from South Korea's Osan air base, near the border, and Japanese TV channel NHK confirmed that the diplomat had landed in Pyongyang.
North Korea sparked international outrage last October, when it conducted its first nuclear bomb test, triggering United Nations trade sanctions.
Hill's visit comes amid new hopes that progress can be reached in efforts by Russia, China, Japan, the United States and South Korea to convince the North to halt its nuclear program, following the U.S. diplomat's announcement earlier this week that an ongoing dispute over $25 million of Pyongyang's funds frozen in a Macao bank for almost two years had been resolved.
The issue of the funds held in Banco Delta Asia, most of which have now been returned to the impoverished country, proved a major stumbling block in the talks, with Pyongyang refusing to fulfill its commitment under a February agreement reached in Beijing with the five countries to close down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid.
After a complex arrangement was agreed on returning the funds - via the U.S., Russia's Central Bank, and a bank in Russia's Far East - Pyongyang said it would re-admit monitors from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, next week.
The U.S. envoy said earlier he expected the six-party talks to resume "within weeks."
Yonhap agency quoted Thursday the South Korean envoy at the talks, Chun Yung Woo, as saying that informal six-party talks should be held on July 10, as a prelude to resuming official negotiations.
If North Korea agrees to international demands that it end its nuclear program, it stands to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, as well as having sanctions lifted.
The last visit to Pyongyang by a Washington envoy was in October 2002, when James Kelly, then assistant secretary of state, accused Pyongyang of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program and violating a denuclearization agreement. The confrontational talks triggered a long standoff between the U.S. and North Korea, provoking the country to expel nuclear inspectors and resume work at the Yongbyon reactor.
