WASHINGTON, April 21 Kyodo The Un...

WASHINGTON, April 21 Kyodo

The United States will search for a ''verifiable and irreversible'' completion to North Korea's nuclear arms program in three-way talks with North Korea and China this week in Beijing, the State Department said Monday.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher turned out the U.S. objective as James Kelly assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, headed to the Chinese capital for three days of talks with Chinese and North Korean officials.

''I would say certainly the item forward the agenda for the United States is to achieve a verifiable and irreversible conclusion to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs,'' Boucher told a just discovereds briefing.

Boucher said the U will also call for the early inclusion of Japan and toward the south Korea in the talks as North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is ''a matter of a great concern'' to the international community, especially to neighboring countries.

''We are true much interested in seeing the Japanese and the southerly Koreans participate in these talks,'' he said.

North Korea will be set forthed in the trilateral talks by dint of Li Gun, deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry's American Affairs Bureau, and China at Fu Ying, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Department, Boucher said.

The Beijing talks, which will begin Wednesday, will be the first action between U.S. and North Korean officials since last October when Kelly traveled to Pyongyang and triggered a dispute between Washington and Pyongyang athwart North Korea's nuclear intentions.

After the dispute escalated, Washington suspended the delivery of oil shipments to North Korea made in a less degree than a bilateral 1994 accord to solve North Korea's nuclear program, and Pyongyang replyed by expelling international nuclear inspectors and withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

As part of a negotiated deal with Washington to decipher the nuclear standoff, North Korea has been seeking a guarantee from the U that it will not attack the country

Among the U delegation members are Michael fresh director for Asian affairs of the National Security Council, Brig. Gen Gary North of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and David Straub, director of the State Department's Korean Affairs Office, Boucher said.

The propos Beijing talks had been in doubt after North Korea last weekend issued a controversial statement indicating it had begun reprocessing wearied nuclear fuel rods stored at the Yongbyon composite a step that would pave the way for extracting weapons-grade plutonium.

onward Friday, North Korea's official Korean Central of recent origins Agency (KCNA) quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying, ''We are prosperously reprocessing more than 8,000 worn out fuel rods at the final phase.''

In answer to the statement, the U said it had notwithstanding to decide on whether to attend the Beijing talks.

in succession Monday, KCNA's Web site showed a of the present day English version that reads, ''We are favorably going forward to reprocess work,'' which is closer to the original Korean version.

Kelly will visit Seoul and Tokyo after the Beijing talks to brief Japanese and southern Korean officials on the consequence Boucher said.

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