Bush writes North Korea on nuclear program

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush has written to North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il to say Pyongyang must fulfill its promise to reveal all details of its nuclear programs, the White House said on Thursday.

The unusual direct communication between Bush and the communist leader he has professed to loathe was made amid uncertainty over when and how Pyongyang will meet nuclear disarmament steps agreed with Washington.

"The president reiterated our commitment to the six-party talks and stressed the need for North Korea to come forward with a full and complete declaration of their nuclear programs, as called for in the September 2005 six-party agreement," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

"President Bush wrote letters to all the leaders involved in the six party-talks last Saturday, December 1," he said. The group also includes Russia, Japan, China, South Korea.

North Korea shuttered its main reactor in July under a February deal. In exchange for disabling its plutonium production facilities, the impoverished country will receive 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

As part of the accord reached earlier this year, Pyongyang, which tested a nuclear device last year in defiance of international warnings, must also provide a complete accounting of its nuclear programs by the end of the year.

Both the United States and North Korea made clear on Thursday they could accept some slippage in that deadline.

Pyongyang's KCNA news agency said visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill handed the letter from Bush to North Korea's Foreign Minister on Wednesday. The short report did not disclose any contents of the letter.

In Beijing to brief Chinese officials on his three-day trip to North Korea, Hill made no mention of the letter in earlier news briefings and was not available for immediate comment.

NUCLEAR COMPLEX

Bush's gesture comes as North Korea edges toward a deadline to "disable" its key nuclear complex at Yongbyon and disclose all its nuclear activities by the end of December in a deal reached at six-party disarmament talks.

"I believe President Bush's letter was aimed at backing what Christopher Hill had been telling to the North Koreans in the past negotiations," Korea expert Noriyuki Suzuki of the Tokyo-based Radiopress news agency told Reuters.

"The letter must contain the basic U.S. stance that Washington is ready to drop North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, improve relations and normalizediplomatic relations with North Korea on condition that the North disable and abandon its nuclear weapons programs," Suzuki said.

Hill has said the North was moving to cripple the reactor and other units at Yongbyon so they would be difficult to restart. But disagreement remains over what should appear in the tell-all declaration of nuclear activities Pyongyang has promised.

Before meeting Chinese diplomats to brief them on his Pyongyang trip, Hill said that one of the points of dispute was North Korea's efforts to enrich uranium, a way of making nuclear material that does not rely on reactors.

"We've had a lot of discussions with them about uranium enrichment," Hill told reporters, adding that the United States had "very good evidence" that North Korea had bought enrichment technology and had received assistance from Pakistan.

South Korea's foreign minister indicated in Seoul that North Korea may miss its year-end disarmament goal. "We are aiming for the initial end-of-the-year deadline, but we may need to be a little more flexible," Song Min-soon said, according to a spokesman for his ministry.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, travelling to Brussels for a NATO meeting, said: "It's gonna take a monumental effort to get all of this done by the end of the year and I am not too concerned about whether it is December 31st or not."

"Things seem to be on track. Disablement is just something that is technical in nature. It is not as if you can rush it along. You have to do it and do it right" she added.