EU: N. Korea "Committed" To Nixing Nukes

North Korea is committed to carrying out its promise on denuclearization, a European Union lawmaker said Wednesday following a trip to the communist country.

"They said they were committed to achieving it," Hubert Pirker, who led a five-member team of EU Parliament lawmakers to North Korea, told a press conference in Seoul, where he was holding consultations with South Korean officials.

North Korean officials, however, gave no specific timeline to shut down the reactor, Pirker said.

U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill, who visited the North last week, said the shutdown could come in as little as about three weeks.

On Tuesday, Pirker said that North Korean officials he met were committed to close the country's Yongbyon reactor quickly, perhaps during the next month, in line with a February agreement.

"They say to us in a very clear answer: 'We will do, we will follow the contract, we will realize it as soon as possible — maybe during the next month,"' Pirker quoted them as saying in reference to the accord reached with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

"It was a climate totally different from all the other visits we had years ago," Pirker said. "Maybe, there is a new chance, a new opportunity, to bring the country forward (in) more open directions," he said.

The delegation arrived Tuesday in South Korea via Beijing after a four-day visit to Pyongyang. North Korean officials that they met included Choe Thae Bok, speaker of North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature.

Pirker, a member of the EU Parliament from Austria, told The Associated Press later Tuesday that North Korean officials were expecting "a totally new quality" in their relations with the United States.

He said that North Korea appeared to be getting over past mistrust of the United States.

North Korea has considered the U.S. its No. 1 enemy, accusing Washington of plotting to invade the communist nation. The two countries have been at odds since the 1950-53 Korean War, in which the U.S. fought on the side of South Korea.

Relations appear to have been improving since the U.S. helped release North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank over allegations of money laundering and counterfeiting, enabling the chief U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, to make his first visit to Pyongyang last week.

Pirker was accompanied by two other EU lawmakers and two staff members, according to the European Union office in Seoul.

The EU Parliament periodically sends a delegation of officials responsible for Korean affairs to visit the North and South.