North Korea has agreed to fully disclose and disable its entire nuclear programme by the end of the year, the chief US negotiator said last night — the first time Pyongyang has offered a timeline to end its nuclear ambitions.

Christopher Hill, who has been negotiating with Pyongyang for months over its nuclear programme, said under the deal North Korea would fully disarm in return for aid and security guarantees — most notably the normalisation of ties with the US.

If North Korea is genuine in its pledge to detail and dismantle its nuclear programme, and if it can be fully verified with inspections, it will represent one of the biggest diplomatic breakthroughs of the Bush presidency and have enormous geopolitical repercussions.

North Korea, called part of an “axis of evil” by President Bush in 2002, conducted its first atomic test in October and has been enriching uranium and plutonium for more than a decade.

Expert View

Anyone who believes Pyongyang will abandon its nuclear weapons by the end of this year is dreaming

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor

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An agreement was reached with North Korea by the Clinton Administration in 1994, under which the North agreed to freeze its plutonium enrichment in return for aid.

But it fell apart in October 2002 when Pyongyang admitted that it had been secretly enriching uranium.

The US now believes that Pyongyang has up to six atomic weapons. The deal struck yesterday goes further than the 1994 Framework Agreement because North Korea has agreed to entirely reveal and dismantle both its plutonium and uranium programmes. “Full means full,” Mr Hill said. He said that six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia will continue, with the next session next month to produce “a more detailed implementation plan for disablement”.

Kim Gye Gwan, head of the North Korean delegation, said: “We made it clear, we showed clear willingness to declare and dismantle all nuclear facilities. We are happy with the way the peace talks went.”

He mentioned no dates.

Mr Hill said that the ultimate aim was not just declarations of disabling facilities but to make the entire Korean peninsular free of nuclear weapons while forging closer regional ties.

One step would be to remove Pyongyang from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Under the deal, North Korea will receive oil and other financial aid and, perhaps most importantly for the paranoid regime in Pyongyang, security guarantees from the US.

Yesterday’s deal followed the first significant step in the negotiations in February, when North Korea agreed to shut down a key nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Since then it has received 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil from Seoul.

During Mr Bush’s first term his Administration’s policy was to refuse to negotiate with Pyongyang until it began dismantling its nuclear programme.

But Washington and Pyongyang eventually agreed to the six-party format, and in recent months the talks have made significant progress.

Mr Hill said that the latest talks in Geneva had been “very good and very substantive”. He added: “It is a relationship that we will continue to try to build step-by-step with the understanding that we’re not going to have a normalised relationship until we have a de-nuclearised North Korea.”

— Iran has reached a goal in its atomic drive by putting into operation more than 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges in defiance of world powers, President Ahmadinejad has announced. His statement came as Iran steps up co-operation with the UN atomic agency to answer questions about its atomic drive. (AFP)

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