China wants NKorea talks next week: Report

Seoul, July 10: China wants to resume talks on ending North Korea's nuclear arms programme next week, media said today, with a session likely to coincide with Pyongyang starting to shut its reactor and weapons-grade plutonium source.

China, which has hosted all the previous sessions, will propose a session among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States that will last for two or three days from July 18, South Korea's Yonhap news agency and Japan's Kyodo news agency cited diplomatic sources in Beijing as saying.

China itself said it was seeking a meeting of the heads of the six parties in mid-July but that no date had been set. ''China is in close coordination with the other parties,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

Under a February 13 deal, Pyongyang pledged to shut its antiquated Yongbyon reactor and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into the country in exchange for 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil supplied by Seoul.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said last week that the North was considering suspending operations at its nuclear facilities as soon as the first shipment -- due to leave Seoul on Thursday -- reaches its ports.

On Monday in Vienna, the IAEA's governing body agreed to send monitors to North Korea ''within a week or two'' to verify the shutdown.

It would be the first IAEA mission in the reclusive state since it expelled IAEA inspectors in 2002 after Washington accused it of a clandestine effort to enrich uranium for bombs.

Reuters

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