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The United States said Monday it had received only "initial" and non-specific reports from two unofficial US delegations that visited Pyongyang and suspect North Korean nuclear sites last week but expected to hear more in coming days. The State Department said members of one of the delegations had given a preliminary report to the US embassy in Beijing but had not been able to provide specific details about what they had seen. "We didn't get any details and I think we'd expect to get a fuller readout sometime after they return to Washington" this week, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. North Korea said Saturday that it had showed its "nuclear deterrent" to their US visitors and US newspapers later reported that delegation appeared to have seen reprocessed plutonium, a key ingredient for making nuclear bombs. But Ereli said "technical discussions ... didn't take place in any great detail" between the delegation members and the US officials they spoke to after visiting North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear site. "That kind of reporting is, at this point, premature and speculative," he said. A senior State Department official later told reporters that the delegation members -- congressional aides Keith Luse and Frank Jannuzi -- had not been able to positively identify what they were shown. "I don't think they know exactly what they saw," the official said on condition of anonymity. "At least they weren't in a position to provide full details." The official's comments squared with those of Wi Sung-Lac, head of the US affairs bureau at South Korea's foreign ministry, who met with Luse and Januzzi on Sunday in Seoul. "They told me that even if they could describe what they had seen at the facilities, they could not characterize its meaning and value," Wi said after meeting with the US delegates. Members of the other unofficial US delegation, which included two nuclear experts and a former State Department official with years of experience with North Korea, did not appear to have reported back to Washington on their trip. Ereli had no comment on North Korea's offer on Monday to freeze its nuclear reactors producing weapons grade plutonium if it received compensatoion, saying the United States wanted at this point to return to multi-lateral talks on verifiably ending and irreversibly ending Pyongyang's atomic weapons program. But, he did note that two diplomats from China, which had been working to resume the so-called six-party talks since they broke off last fall, would be in Washington for talks with US officials this week. Ning Fukai, who was appointed last month as special ambassador to coordinate the stalled negotiations, and Fu Ying, the director of the Asian section of the foreign ministry are to meet with the top US Asia-Pacific envoy, James Kelly, at the State Department on Tuesday, Ereli said. He did not address news reports published earlier Monday in Tokyo that said a senior Chinese official had told Japanese lawmakers he expected the next round of six-way talks to resume in February. "The discussions that we're having ... between all the parties are serious and positive and that we're hopeful that talks can be resumed," Ereli said. A second round of six-party talks -- between China, the United States, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan -- had been expected in Beijing in December, but it has now been pushed into this year. A first round of talks ended inconclusively in the Chinese capital in August, with North Korea later dismissing the negotiations as "useless". The crisis began in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of running an enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord. Washington insists Pyongyang must verifiably scrap its atomic weapons, while North Korea has sought a non-aggression pact with the United States and other benefits in return for giving up its nuclear arsenal. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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