South Korean nuclear envoys were set for a rare visit to North Korea Thursday aimed at advancing sputtering disarmament talks, days after it issued tough terms for ending its atomic ambitions, Reuters reported.
North Korea will challenge the team of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama after it takes office next week and may try brinkmanship to increase its bargaining leverage, President George W. Bush's top Asia adviser said in Washington on Wednesday.
No date has been set for the return of South Korean nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook, leading one of the few nuclear delegations the South has ever sent to its secretive neighbor, the foreign ministry said.
Hwang told reporters in Seoul Tuesday he would discuss the purchase of 14,000 unused fuel rods from the North's nuclear plant as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal the North struck with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The South might be able to extract material from the rods to use in its civilian nuclear program, an expert said.
The North, which was hit with U.N. sanctions after its October 2006 nuclear test, cannot sell the rods overseas due to export controls and could try to dispose of them by having one of the five powers in the nuclear talks act as an intermediary.
The rods, if processed in a reactor, could produce enough plutonium for at least one or perhaps two nuclear weapons. The five powers have been in talks for months about their export.
The North has sent mixed signals in the past few weeks about how it will conduct its nuclear dealings.
It appeared to have extended an olive branch to Obama by saying in a New Year's message it was willing to work with countries that were friendly.
But Tuesday, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman issued a harshly worded statement that said Pyongyang wanted to check that the U.S. military was not deploying nuclear weapons in the South and demanded Washington end its nuclear deterrent.
"We will never do such a thing as showing our nuclear weapons first even in 100 years unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK (North Korea) are fundamentally terminated," the spokesman said, according to its official media.
He added that if the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" was removed, the North would feel no need to keep its nuclear weapons. While the United States says it has no nuclear weapons in South Korea, it is bound guarantee to Seoul's security and it has long-range nuclear capabilities.
South Korea's foreign ministry Thursday criticized the North for its statement, which Seoul said ran counter to the principles of the six-way nuclear negotiations.
If North Korea wants to raise tension, it could try to restore its plutonium-producing nuclear plant, which it has been taking apart under the deal in return for aid and better diplomatic standing.
Nuclear experts said it could resume operation at its plant that separates plutonium from spent fuel in a few months.
North Korea's already weak economy will be dragged down even further the longer the nuclear talks are stalled because Washington has called for a suspension of most aid to North Korea for not abiding by the disarmament deal, which experts said could lead it back to the bargaining table.
