Five regional powers will hold talks with North Korea from today on ending its atomic weapons plans and verifying an account of its nuclear programs that the North presented in June, a South Korean envoy disclosed today.
The talks, the first in nine months, follow Washington's move towards removing North Korea from a terrorism blacklist while calling on the secretive state to answer questions about proliferating technology and enriching uranium for weapons.
"The official schedule for the top envoys' meeting will start in the afternoon of July 10," South Korean envoy Kim Sook told reporters before heading to Beijing for the talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
In late June, the North presented a long-delayed account of its nuclear weapons program that contained information on its plutonium production, but did little to address U.S. suspicions of a secret uranium enrichment program.
Yonhap news agency reported that North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan had arrived in Beijing.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in October 2006, was required in a disarmament-for-aid deal to make the declaration and start taking apart its Soviet-era nuclear plant at Yongbyon by the end of 2007.
It had completed most of the disablement steps by the end of last year. On June 27, in a symbolic move to show its commitment to the deal, the reclusive state invited in foreign media to witness a controlled blast that brought down the cooling tower at its nuclear reactor.