US urges haste in NKorea's nuke disarmament

---

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill (L) smiles while his South Korean counterpart Chun Yung-woo speaks to reporters after their dinner at a hotel in Seoul Monday.

SEOUL, Jun 19 (AFP): US chief negotiator Christopher Hill called on North Korea Tuesday to speed up the promised scrapping of its nuclear programme as South Korea said the process could be finished this year.
"We really have to pick up the pace, get back to the timelines and get through this very crucial phase of disablement," Hill told reporters after an apparent weekend breakthrough in a stalled nuclear disarmament pact.
South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon told parliament he expected the North to close down its Yongbyon reactor by mid- to late July. An unidentified North Korean diplomat in Beijing gave a similar timeframe Monday.
Shutting down Yongbyon, the source of raw material for bomb-making plutonium, is part of the "initial actions" laid out under the February 13 six-nation deal.
Permanently disabling the reactor and all other atomic programmes is the second and final step. "I think it is possible," Song said when a legislator asked if this could be done by year-end.
Song also said he understood that frozen North Korean funds in a Macau bank which had blocked any progress on the disarmament pact "have been finally transferred to a North Korean bank account."
The 20-25 million dollars in funds had been frozen on US suspicions of money-laundering and counterfeiting. After weeks spent grappling with technical and legal issues, the cash transfer began last Thursday.
Pyongyang, declaring the money dispute almost settled, Saturday invited an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team to discuss procedures to be followed when Yongbyon is shut down. The team will visit next week.
"I think there is room to get back on to the schedules so by the end of the calendar year we can see a considerably improved position," Hill said after talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Shim Yoon-Joe.
"I think the next days and weeks are critical to efforts to achieve our timelines."
Hill arrived from Beijing and leaves later Tuesday for Tokyo.