US's Hill floats disarmament timetable to NKorea

BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters) Chief U S negotiator Christopher Hill struck an optimistic note today ahead of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme, suggesting they could settle on a disarmament timetable in coming days.

The negotiators, fresh from securing a shutdown of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, gathered in Beijing with the much harder task of coaxing Pyongyang to give up a trove of atomic secrets long guarded as vital for its survival.

The envoys sit down to two days of talks tomorrow.

Hill told reporters he had advanced the idea to the North Koreans of a timetable that would end the second phase of disarmament by the end of the year.

Such a phase would involve North Korea's declaration of its nuclear activities and a full disabling of Yongbyon.

''My idea is that we try to wra this up in calendar year '07,'' he told reporters. ''I think we are on the same ballpark.'' He said he could not speak for the North Koreans but that he felt they were reasonably receptive.

Yongbyon produces material that can be turned into weapons-grade plutonium and in February North Korea agreed to close it in return for 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, which began moving there from South Korea last week.

North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia will now begin to explore how to scrap the Yongbyon complex and terminate North Korea's nuclear weapons potential.

Negotiators warned of turbulent talks ahead. Japan's Kenichiro Sasae welcomed the shutting of Yongbyon but underscored the difficulty of persuading North Korea to disclose covert nuclear activities.

''This is just a first step of their undertaking and I believe very long and difficult issues will be in store for us,'' he told reporters after arriving in Beijing.

South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said the talks faced ''a bumpy road''. North Korean chief negotiator Kim Kye-gwan said envoys would shift their attention to the post-shutdown phase.

''So the talks will focus on the sequence of the obligation and actions to be taken by the concerned parties at the second phase under February 13 agreement,'' Kim said in Pyongyang before heading to Beijing, according to Xinhua news agency.

''FIRST MOUNTAIN'' That next stage promises to be contentious even by the bruising standards of the talks that began in 2003.

''We've got to the first mountain in a pretty big mountain range. Yongbyon was the first step in a very tough process,'' said Peter Beck, who analyses North Korea from Seoul for the International Crisis Group, a non-government think tank.

Pyongyang refused to close Yongbyon until Washington cleared away an international snarl-up over some 25 million dollars of its funds unfrozen from a Macau bank as part of the February deal.

North Korea officials had called the bank demand a test of U S ''sincerity'' and such testing of wills is likely to shape the forthcoming phase of talks.

Negotiators said Pyongyang must now prepare to permanently disable Yongbyon and offer a full account of its nuclear activities, which Washington has said included efforts to enrich uranium -- a potential route to nuclear weapons materials that does not need tell-tale reactors.

''While North Korea has started to take the first step, it is important to ensure sure-footed progress towards denuclearisation,'' Japan's Sasae said.

After throwing out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in late 2002, North Korea quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the IAEA enforces.

In 2005, Pyongyang declared it had nuclear arms, and last October it alarmed the world with its first test detonation.

''It's still an unanswered question whether North Korea has the will to abandon nuclear weapons,'' said Zhang Liangui, a Chinese expert on the North.

REUTERS SKB HT1910