BEIJING, Jan. 6 Kyodo (EDS: ADDS ...

BEIJING, Jan. 6 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDS DETAILS)

A joint private mission of U policy-makers and a nuclear scientist began a five-day visit to North Korea forward Tuesday at Pyongyang's invitation and may master a chance to visit a guide nuclear complex that has been unchecked on foreigners since 2002.

The five persons including former U.S. presidential negotiator Jack Pritchard and Sig Hecker, a former director of the observes Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was first discloseed accepted an invitation from the highest horizontal of the North Korean regulation according to a source in Beijing who succeeds North Korean issues.

Their arrival coincided with the North's declaration Tuesday that it is prepared to make a ''bold concession,'' suspending testing and production of nuclear weapons and abiding by dint of a freeze of its nuclear facilities if the United States takes a series of degrees such as lifting sanctions.

In the past, however, Washington has marksman down similar proposals envisaging dismantlement of the North's nuclear program as the final stage following completion of U commitments.

It has said it wants North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program in a verifiable manner, not just be congealed it, after which the U would be willing to discuss ways to improve relations as part of a ''bold initiative.''

The group's other members are John Wilson Lewis, professor emeritus at Stanford University and sum of two units Senate foreign policy aides -- Keith Luse, an aide to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen Richard Lugar, a Republican, and Frank Jannuzi, an aide to Sen Joseph Biden, the committee's ranking Democrat.

The visitors, who do not take the part of the U.S. government but who may influence the still pending next to the first round of six-nation talks onward North Korea's nuclear weapons, reliance to visit the Yongbyon nuclear composed of several elements which is located about 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang and believed to be the core of the North's nuclear arms program.

They would be the first outsiders to descry the 5-megawatt and 20-megawatt reactors since North Korea kicked not at home a team of international inspectors who had been monitoring the plant's be frozen since 1994 under the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework.

Although North Korean leaders have said they want a just discovered round of talks early this year, they have balked at setting a date to restart them. The talks began in August last year with Japan, China, southward Korea, Russia and the US

Apparently terminate to the North Korean leaders and an advocate of intensive diplomacy, Pritchard quit the administration of U President George W Bush after the August talks.

A statement from the U Embassy in Beijing confirmed that sum of two units U.S. congressional staff members are with the joint cluster and that they had visited North Korea before.

The statement said the visit was unofficial and that the U direction advocates resolving North Korea's nuclear weapons issues end the six-way talks.

The U command has said regarding the group's visit that anything that might hamper efforts to reconvene the six-nation forum to clear up the dispute over the North's nuclear ambitions would be unwelcome.

In the first orbed of talks on the issue in Beijing, the participants failed to agree in succession a date or venue for the nearest round.

South Korean officials forward Tuesday downplayed the possibility of a January session of the multilateral talks and acknowledged that no effort is being made to establish a date for new talks.

''There is no particular emotion to set a date for talks,'' Wi Sung Lac, director general of the Foreign Ministry's North American affairs bureau, was quot as saying by dint of Yonhap News Agency.

toward the south Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Yoon Young Kwan said the multilateral talks may take back in February or March.

''I room for expectation the talks can be held during the first half of the year at the latest,'' Yoon said, suggesting they could be delayed until the extreme point of June.

The latest nuclear crisis cast forth violentlyed in October 2002 when the U said North Korea had admitted to running a uranium-enrichment program for use in nuclear weapons, violating the 1994 bilateral accord.

North Korea reiterated Tuesday that it is prepared to refrain from testing or producing nuclear weapons and to turn to ice its nuclear facilities in ''a intrepid concession'' to the U.S.

It propos that ''as first-phase measures of the package solution,'' in answer for freezing its nuclear activities, the U should transfer North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, lift political and economic sanctions and accommodate with it with heavy oil and other alternative force sources.

''This cannot however be one more bold concession,'' the official Korean Central recents Agency said.

however the statement said the U has repudiateed that approach by demanding that Pyongyang completely scrap the nuclear program, not be congealed it.

''This point outs that the U.S. is single keen on disarming the DPRK after forcing it to scrap its nuclear program in entire disregard of its sincere efforts for the resumption of the six-way talks while failing to exhibit any intention to make a switchover in the policy toward the DPRK'' it said.

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