"It is the government's goal to accomplish complete denuclearisation (of North Korea) as early as summer next year, if we can begin dismantlement following disablement," South Korea nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo told reporters on Tuesday.
PEACE PROCESS PROMISE
Under the deal reached between China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States, Pyongyang will get aid equivalent to 950,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and Washington will move toward taking it off a U.S. terrorism blacklist.
"Disabling it is not the end of the road, but I think it is an important milestone because it signals to the North Koreans that we are not going back from here," Hill said.
"We have good reason to believe that begining in the new year, '08, we will have a problem in North Korea that is reduced to the presence of 50 kilos of separated plutonium. Plutonium that has already been produced from this 5 megawatt reactor in Yongbyon," Hill said.
"We need to get Korea to abandon that 50 kilos and that will be the toughest sell. If we do get to this point of 50 kilos, one thing we have agreed to start with is the peace process on the Korean peninsula."
President George W. Bush said last month the United States would be willing to consider a peace treaty with North Korea if it gave up its nuclear weapons programme. A peace treaty would replace the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
Hill said a peace treaty could see North Korea "accepted as part of the landscape on the Korean peninsula" and the demilitarised zone turned into an international border.
But Hill said he remained concerned about North Korea's nuclear proliferation activities, citing a media report of a nuclear link between North Korea and Syria.
The New York Times has said Israel launched an airstrike last month on a Syrian nuclear reactor which was partially built and apparently modelled on one in North Korea used for stockpiling atomic bomb fuel. Syria denies having a nuclear facility.
"We have to be very concerned about North Korean's proliferation activities," Hill said. "We have to view these things with great concern and I have raised them with North Korea and will continue to do that."
