U.S. Official: N. Korea Ready to Disable Nuclear Reactor

Hill has long believed that he could make more progress if he met with a wider range of North Korean officials than just the nuclear negotiators. Hill met North Korea's Foreign Minister, Pak Ui-chun, and its nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, Reuters reported. It was unclear whether he met or tried to meet with Kang Suk Ju, the first vice foreign minister and right-hand man of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Kang has directed North Korea's nuclear diplomacy since the early 1990s.

"Kang is the buffer," said Charles L. "Jack" Pritchard, president of the Korean Economic Institute, said on Thursday.

Footage from Associated Press Television showed Hill arriving at Pyongyang's airport Thursday in a small jet amid a steady downpour. His five-member delegation was met by Li Gun, Pyongyang's deputy nuclear negotiator.

"We want to get the six-party process moving," Hill, standing under an umbrella, said in the footage. "We hope that we can make up for some of the time that we lost this spring, and so I'm looking forward to good discussions about that."

After his meetings, Hill told APTN before departing Pyongyang: "We had a good discussion about the way forward at the six-party talks." He declined to provide specifics. North Korea had pledged in February to disable the Yongbyon reactor, but it missed an April deadline because of a dispute over $25 million in North Korean-linked funds that had been frozen because of a Treasury Department investigation. North Korea demanded a wire transfer, but for months no bank would agree to accept the money because about half of it appeared linked to North Korean money-laundering and other illicit activities.

That dispute was apparently resolved this week, after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wired about $23 million to the Russian central bank last week. (About $2 million could not be transferred because North Korean officials could not obtain the appropriate release from account holders, U.S. officials said.) Russian officials announced yesterday that the funds were to be transferred to a Russian bank in which North Korea has an account, finally giving Pyongyang access to the money.

North Korea has said that once it receives the money, it would invite International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to begin discussions on the closure of the facility, which produces weapons-grade plutonium.

Since the reactor was restarted in 2002, North Korea has obtained enough plutonium to make as many as a dozen weapons.