A senior US official will visit North Korea this week in a bid
to persuade Pyongyang to keep its promise to disclose all its
nuclear programs and eventually abandon them, local media reported
on Monday.
Sung Kim, the director of the State Department's Office of
Korean Affairs, was scheduled to arrive in Pyongyang on Thursday
after his visit to South Korea on Tuesday and China on Wednesday,
the report quoted an unidentified US official as saying.
Kim is expected to return home on February 3.
Observers have noticed that Kim's scheduled visit to Northeast
Asia occurs at a time when the United States has kept complaining
that North Korea failed to announce "a complete and correct
declaration" of its nuclear programs.
Under an agreement reached in October 2007 at the six-party
talks, North Korea agreed to disable its key nuclear facilities at
the Yongbyon complex, and to declare all other nuclear programs by
the end of the year.
The six parties refer to the United States, North Korea, China,
South Korea, Japan and Russia.
North Korea has denied that it had missed the deadline to submit
that declaration, saying "other participating nations delay the
fulfillment of their commitments, North Korea is compelled to
adjust the tempo of the disablement of some nuclear facilities on
the principle of 'action for action'."
(Xinhua News Agency January 29, 2008)
