The top American nuclear envoy arrived in Beijing on Friday for talks on North Korea's nuclear programs as Pyongyang took steps seen as reversing its promised disarmament, according to AP. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was to attend discussions with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts before meeting with host China's representative, Wu Dawei, on Saturday, said Richard Buangan, a spokesman from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. It was not immediately clear if any meetings were scheduled with the North Koreans. The North began moving disassembled parts of its main nuclear reactor back to the plutonium-producing facility this week, putting into action a threat it would restore atomic facilities that had been partially disabled under a disarmament pact, South Korea said Wednesday. Pyongyang says that the United States has not held up its end of their disarmament deal _ a promise to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Washington says it will take the North off the list only after it complies with a disarmament requirement. South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Sook, said before leaving for Beijing he has no information on whether North Korea's nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, would be in the Chinese capital. The U.S. and North Korean negotiators have sometimes met in Beijing in the past when their negotiations were deadlocked. «I'm going to meet my counterparts from the United States, China and Japan to establish a joint view of the current situation and discuss ways to deal with it,» Kim told reporters. «I hope the impasse will be broken at an early date and North Korea will resume» disarmament steps, he said. The United States has played down the latest North Korean move, saying Pyongyang just moved some equipment out of storage and it has not yet started to «reconstruct, reintegrate this equipment back into the facility.» Kim said he did not have information on whether Pyongyang had done anything more to undo its disarmament steps, beyond moving equipment out of storage and placing it near the atomic reactor at its Yongbyon plant. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency has said it would take some time for North Korea to restore the facilities to an operational state because the country had already removed «essential» equipment from them. South Korean and U.S. officials have said it would take at least a year for North Korea to restart the facilities once they are completely disabled.
