A team of U.S. nuclear experts arrived Tuesday to discuss Pyongyang's promised declaration of its nuclear programs.
The U.S. team, led by Sung Kim, director of the Korean desk of the U.S. State Department, drove across the 38th parallel from Panmunjom, the border of the South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
During the two-day meeting to be held in Pyongyang's Koryo Hotel, the U.S. team will discuss with its DPRK counterparts on how to verify the declaration of its nuclear programs that Pyongyang was due to deliver by Dec. 31 of 2007.
The U.S. team is scheduled to leave on Thursday.
The DPRK's failure to disclose an inventory of its nuclear activities has bogged down a 2005 multilateral deal under which Pyongyang was committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and programs in return for diplomatic and economic incentives.
Christopher Hill, U.S. top negotiator with the DPRK, had met with his DPRK counterpart Kim Kye Gwan in Singapore on April 8, saying they had made progress toward resuming stalled negotiationsover the Pyongyang's nuclear program.
On April 9, the DPRK Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang and Washington had reached an agreement on the nuclear declaration.
Under a six-party agreement released last October, once the DPRK has produced its nuclear declaration, the United States is expected to remove the sanctions on Pyongyang stemming from its inclusion on the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list and under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2008)
