N.K. nuclear envoy says more discussions needed on nuclear sampling

SINGAPORE, Dec. 5 (Yonhap) -- Top North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan said on Friday taking samples from the country's nuclear complex is one way of verifying its past nuclear activities and an issue that requires further discussions.
"Sampling is a method of verification and so we need more discussions on that
matter," Kim told reporters after meeting his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill
in Singapore.
"We discussed in detail for the past two days about how to wrap up the
(implementation) of the Oct. 3 agreement," Kim said.
He said topics of the talks included the how to verify North Korea's nuclear
activities that it declared in June,
"We came to know what are issues of mutual interest and concern (through the
meeting) and will continue discussions in the future," he said.
Pyongyang agreed last year to disable its nuclear under a six-party nuclear
disarmament deal with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
Washington maintains Pyongyang agreed in October to allow international
inspectors to remove samples from its Yongbyon nuclear complex for testing. But
Pyongyang has denied having reached such an agreement.
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