Too Soon To Tell On N. Korea Nukes

A U.S. team that visited North Korea's secretive nuclear plant was unable to say how far the North has come in developing a nuclear weapons and need to further analyze what they saw, a South Korean official said Monday.

Two Congressional staffers who were on the American delegation met with South Korean officials to discuss the visit to the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where the North said it showed them its "nuclear deterrent" — though what exactly they saw still has not been made public.

The two staffers told the South Koreans that "they cannot say that anything was proven or verified during their trip," said Wi Sung-lac, a director-general at the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

"They said many things were unclear and they needed more discussions and analysis before coming to their own assessment," he said.

Republican aide Keith Luse and Democratic colleague Frank Jannuzi — of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — have so far refused to give details on what the team saw, saying it would be premature to draw conclusions.

The delegation, which included former Los Alamos Laboratory director Sig Hecker, was the first outsider visit to the Yongbyon facility since U.N. inspectors were ejected in late 2002.

The five U.S. delegates held discussions with North Korean nuclear scientists, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan and Lt. Gen. Ri Chan Bok, the North Korean military's point man at talks with the U.S.-led United Nations Command in Seoul, Wi said.

Luse said more details would be made public at a Jan. 20 hearing of their Senate committee.

"We have had a full day of meeting with South Korean officials," Jannuzi said after meeting Unification Ministry official Park Chan-bong. "We have had very fruitful consultations and discussions. We hope that our visit here helps to continue the tradition of strong coordination between Washington and Seoul and contribute to the success of six-party talks."

On Monday, a spokesman of North Korea's Foreign Ministry reiterated that the country was willing to freeze its nuclear activities at Yongbyon in return for oil supplies and economic aid from the United States.

North Korea has said agreement would be a first step in restarting talks between the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas that are aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle any nuclear weapons and its weapons-development program.

"If the Bush administration is willing to agree to 'freeze in return for compensation' as the first step of package-deal solution of the nuclear issue, we are willing to freeze the nuclear activities stemming from our graphite-moderated reactor," the spokesman told the North's official news agency KCNA, which was monitored by South Korean news agency Yonhap.

A graphite-moderated 5 megawatt reactor is the core of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. It generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium. North Korea restarted the reactor after expelling U.N. monitors at the end of 2002.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Washington Post reported the group had been shown recently reprocessed plutonium, the fuel for atomic weapons. The material had not been placed in an atomic bomb, and North Korea intimated it was willing to freeze its weapons development to resolve the crisis, the paper said.

The U.S. aides met Monday with officials from South Korea's Unification Ministry, the arm responsible for North Korean affairs. They were to later meet Foreign Ministry officials before leaving South Korea on Tuesday.

A first round of six-nation talks ended in Beijing in August without much progress.

In Washington, the State Department said discussions on resuming six-party talks on the nuclear impasse with North Korea are "serious and positive." Spokesman Adam Ereli made the comment as U.S. prepared for talks on that subject Tuesday with a visiting Chinese delegation.

North Korea has said it will freeze its nuclear programs as a first step in resolving the nuclear dispute, if Washington lifts sanctions against the country, resumes shipments of heavy oil and takes North Korea off the U.S. State Department's list of terrorism-sponsoring countries.

Bristling at the freeze, the United States has demanded that North Korea first verifiably begin dismantling its nuclear programs before receiving any concessions.