A U.S. team will travel to Pyongyang next Tuesday and Wednesday to have talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on how to verify any declaration the DPRK may make about its nuclear programs, State Department spokesman Seam McCormack said Friday.
The team will include U.S. State Department official Sung Kim and nuclear experts from other government agencies, McCormack said.
According to a report by the New York Times on Friday, the Bush administration appears to be preparing to back away from a demand the DPRK fully disclose all of its past nuclear weapons activities.
By doing so, the United States is in an attempt to preserve a nuclear agreement with the DPRK requiring it to disclose and dismantle the bulk of its nuclear weapons program, the report said.
As described by administration officials on Thursday, the step would relax a demand for the DPRK to admit fully that it supplies Syria with nuclear technology. The United States would also agree to postpone its demand that the DPRK provide an immediate and full accounting of its fledging uranium program, the report said.
The new stance is intended to help complete a denuclearization deal that would focus instead on the DPRK's more extensive plutonium program, which has been at the heart of its nuclear weapons development and was the source of raw material for the device it tested in October 2006, according to the report.
Source:Xinhua
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