U.S. nuclear envoy due in Seoul before heading to Pyongyang

SEOUL, Sept. 30 (Yonhap) -- Chief American nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill
will cross the heavily-armed inter-Korean border by car into North Korea this
week on a mission to reinvigorate the moribund six-way disarmament accord,
officials said Tuesday.

"Assistant Secretary of State Hill is scheduled to arrive here this afternoon and
visit North Korea through Panmunjom on Wednesday," a U.S. embassy official said,
asking not to be named. Panmunjom is a truce village inside the demilitarized
zone dividing the two Koreas.
The official refused to provide further details, including how long Hill is going
to stay in the communist nation, saying the U.S. "wants to keep his trip
low-key."
Before heading to Pyongyang, Hill plans to meet with his South Korean counterpart
Kim Sook in Seoul to coordinate a strategy to break the logjam in efforts to move
the denuclearization process forward.
This will be the third time Hill has visited the North, following two previous
visits last year.
This latest trip comes following Pyongyang's threats to restart its
plutonium-producing plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex that was being disabled
under an aid-for-denuclearization deal reached last year. The secretive regime
has already removed seals and surveillance cameras installed at the plant by the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice obviously believes it's important for Chris
Hill to go out to the region, particularly to go to Pyongyang, to get a sense on
the ground as to what's going on and obviously to talk with North Korean
officials about why they've taken the steps they've taken," U.S. State
Department's deputy spokesman Robert Wood said.
He said Hill would seek a breakthrough in stalled efforts to establish a
mechanism to verify the North's recent declaration of its nuclear activity. North
Korea and the U.S. are at loggerheads over specifics such as Washington's demand
for unfettered access to nuclear sites and sampling of atomic materials.
"I want to stress this is not something that's out of the norm," Wood said. "It
is a standard verification package. Chris will be making those points when he
goes to the region."
The spokesman, however, was guarded when asked whether Hill is bringing a
compromise proposal on the verification issue.
"I am not going to go into the substance of any message or proposal that Chris
may be carrying to the region, except to say that he is going to the region to
try to look for a way to move this process forward," he said. "And obviously,
Chris will have some ideas about how to do that."