North Korea nuclear report expected by Thursday

Japan's Kyodo news agency said North Korea, which defied international warnings and tested a nuclear device in October 2006, would give the report to China, which chairs the talks, by Thursday. Â

"That's been the target date, as the White House spokeswoman said today," Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the talks, told reporters on Tuesday.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told a briefing in Washington that Thursday was the date being eyed.

"This is a deadline that the North Koreans themselves have put out there," she said.

Giving over the declaration, which was originally promised by the end of 2007, would set in motion a series of steps that would see the United States begin the process of removing Pyongyang from a list of nations Washington sees as sponsors of terrorism.

It would also bring the resumption of six-party talks that group North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China and are aimed at ending the North's nuclear ambitions.

North Korea has begun dismantling its Yongbyon atomic reactor as part of a deal reached at the talks in which it agreed to give up its nuclear programmes in exchange for improved diplomatic ties and economic aid, mostly in the form of energy.

But the talks have been bogged down over Pyongyang's failure to produce the declaration of its nuclear programmes, a prelude to its facilities eventually being dismantled.

The report would not include nuclear weapons, Hill said.

"The declaration at this point, the purpose of it, is to list all of their nuclear materials and all of their nuclear facilities and programmes," Hill said. "With regard to weapons, that has always been the vision for a subsequent phase."

Much of the diplomacy on the issue in the past few weeks has centred on how to verify the contents of any report that North Korea hands over.

"A declaration with substance is extremely important," said Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura.

Japan has also expressed concern about the United States removing North Korea from the terror list before the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korean agents is addressed, but Machimura suggested Tokyo supported the planned sequence of events.

"The United States has made great efforts to improve Japan-North Korean relations and to get North Korea to solve this abductions issue, and it has told the Japanese government it will continue to do so," he said. "The close relationship between Japan and the United States will not change."

North Korea admitted in 2002 that its agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, five of whom have since been repatriated to Japan.

Hill has twice met his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, since arriving in China late last week, and was expected to meet with Chinese academics on Tuesday.

Photo: Reuters