North Korean may visit San Francisco and New York

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) North Korea's top nuclear negotiator may visit San Francisco to meet nongovernmental groups and then go to New York for talks with his US counterpart, the US State Department said today.

Responding to media reports of a possible visit by Kim Kye-gwan to the United States, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters: ''I think that he has some meetings, potentially, with some NGOs out there in San Francisco.'' ''We're still working through the logistics of a meeting between (him) and Chris Hill,'' he added, referring to the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the top US delegate to talks on ending Pyongyang's atomic ambitions.

On Saturday, South Korea's Yonhap News quoted unidentified sources in the United States as saying that Kim would visit San Francisco for a lecture on March 1 and then head to New York for a meeting with Hill.

McCormack said a meeting between Hill and Kim, if one took place, was expected to happen in New York although the date and other details were still being worked out.

Such talks are envisaged under the February 13 agreement in which North Korea agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament in exchange for 300 million dollars in aid.

The agreement, reached four months after Pyongyang stunned the world with its first nuclear test, requires the secretive communist state to shut down the reactor at the heart of its nuclear ambitions and to allow international inspections.

The deal also called for a working group on the normalization of US-North Korean relations to meet within 30 days. The United States proposed that it meet in New York, where US and North Korean officials sometimes have contacts.

REUTERS SBA RN0224