Accord to dismantle N Korean reactor

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Anna Fifield in Seoul and Daniel Dombey in Washington
FT Syndication Service
North Korea will disable the reactor at the heart of its nuclear weapons programme by the year's end and will provide a full account of its nuclear activities by that time, according to an ambitious action plan published last Wednesday.
The plan, the latest step in the international push to bring North Korea's military nuclear ambitions to an end, has now been backed by leaders of the six countries negotiating a resolution to the issue.
President George W Bush gave his assent to the proposal to Christopher Hill, the US top negotiator, and Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, earlier this week. The other countries involved are the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China, which chaired the talks.
The agreement was announced as the leaders of North and South Korea continued a rare summit in Pyongyang. South Korean officials said the North's Kim Jong-il and the South's Roh Moo-hyun might adopt a "peace declaration".
But Wednesday was a day of confusion in Pyongyang, during which Mr Kim asked Mr Roh to stay an extra day in the North, then apparently changed his mind and rescinded the invitation, saying people in Seoul were waiting for their president to return.
Still also unclear is how fast the US will proceed to take North Korea off its terrorist list - an issue it has pledged to work on under the deal - and the final dismantlement of the Yongbyon reactor and the destruction of the weapons grade plutonium that North Korea has already built up.
"We want a situation where they are able to come off the terrorist list.. but we need to make sure that the conditions are fulfilled," Mr Hill told journalists. The North Korean delegation had earlier claimed that the US had laid out a timetable for removing it from the list.
Mr Hill added that the negotiations were focused on the Yongbyon plutonium plant, although the US also wants North Korea to specify whether it has a separate facility to enrich uranium, an alternative path to weapons grade material.
"What is very important for us is that we don't have a lot of plutonium to deal with, that our 50 kg plutonium problem doesn't become a bigger plutonium problem," he said, adding that once Yongbyon was disabled, it could take up to 12 months to restart activities at the reactors.
Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's chief nuclear envoy, called the agreement a "milestone" on the road to eventual complete denuclearisation. "We expect to enter the next phase of nuclear dismantlement next year, once the disablement and declaration measures are implemented based on this new agreement," he said.
The US will lead the disablement - experts are due in Pyongyang next week - and will fund the start of the process.
North Korea will in the meantime receive an additional 100,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. It has already received 150,000 tonnes out of the 1.0m tonnes it is set to receive once it carries out all the steps contained in a broad February denuclearisation agreement.