North Korea has agreed to cooperate fully on verifying its nuclear declaration, a US official has claimed as he displayed some of the 18,822 documents Pyongyang has given Washington about its plutonium program.
Obtaining the documents last week was a victory for the Bush administration, which has struggled to persuade the secretive Communist nation to produce a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear programs that was due on December 31st.
The declaration is part of a broader multilateral deal under which North Korea, which detonated an atomic device in October 2006, would abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.
The declaration has been held up partly because of Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as to account for its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.
The United States accuses North Korea of helping Syria with a suspected nuclear reactor project that Israel destroyed in a September air strike.
It also has accused Pyongyang of pursuing a uranium enrichment program, which could provide it with a second way to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons in addition to the plutonium-based program used in its 2006 nuclear test.
According to people briefed on the talks, the declaration is expected to be split in two parts - a disclosure of North Korea's plutonium-related activities on the one hand and its "acknowledgment" of US concerns about its suspected uranium enrichment and proliferation activities on the other.
Sung Kim, the US State Department's top Korea expert, told reporters US and North Korean officials had "productive" talks about elements of the declaration, which Pyongyang is required to make under the so-called six-party agreement.