US delegation's DPRK trip confirms nothing: S.Korean official

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 13, 2004

US delegation's DPRK trip confirms nothing: S.Korean official

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The civic US delegation's recent trip to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) confirmed nothing, said an official of South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) on Monday night.

Wi Sung-lack, director-general of the North American Affairs Bureau at the MOFAT made the remarks after holding meeting with two members of a US team which recently concluded five-day trip to the DPRK, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

Keith Luse and Frank Jannuzi, aids respectively to Co-Chairman of US Senate Foreign Relation Committee Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden, arrived here Sunday afternoon to brief information of their trip to the DPRK to South Korean officials.

Wi said "although the US delegation visited nuclear facility at Yongbyon in DPRK, the trip did not confirm anything and left many things to be confirmed."

"It's too early to make a conclusion on the US delegation's DPRK visit," said Wi.

The US civic delegation was led by John Wilson Lewis, an expert at the Stanford University. It also included Charles Jack Pritchard, the US State Department former envoy to the DPRK, Sig Hecker, former director of the national nuclear laboratory at Los Alamos.

The US delegation's access to Yongbyon was the first by outside visitors since the DPRK expelled UN nuclear inspectors at the end of 2002 amid confrontation with the United States over the nuclear issue.

The nuclear issue began in the fall of 2002 when US officials said the DPRK had admitted running a secret uranium-based nuclear program.

The United States subsequently halted fuel oil shipments to the DPRK, and Pyongyang expelled UN nuclear inspectors and quit the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Aiming to solve the nuclear issue, China, the US, the DPRK, Russia, South Korea and Japan held first round of multilateral nuclear talks in Beijing last year. And the concerning parties are trying to make the new round of such talks open as soon as possible.

Source: Xinhua

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