US: The US Senate is to be briefed next week on the state of North Korea's nuclear facilities, as shown to members of an independent US delegation who visited the country last week.
Two members of the delegation briefed South Korean officials yesterday about the trip and their assessment of the North Korean government's position.
North Korea reiterated an offer made last week to freeze its nuclear programme as a first step to make the Korean peninsula nuclear free. However, it said it wanted a package deal including compensation for suspending its nuclear activities.
The two accompanied Mr John Lewis, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, and other experts who were the first outsiders allowed into North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex since UN inspectors were expelled a year ago.
Mr Keith Luse and Mr Frank Jannuzi, both Senate foreign relations committee aides, flew into Seoul on Sunday after their five-day unofficial visit to the reclusive communist North.
They declined to answer questions about what they had seen at Yongbyon after briefing officials of South Korea's unification and foreign ministries.
Mr Luse said details of the team's visit would be presented to a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 20th. "At that hearing, we anticipate full disclosure of our visit to Yongbyon and other details of our trip to Pyongyang," he said.
"At this point in time, there really is nothing more we can say." South Korean Foreign Ministry official Mr Wi Sung-lac said after meeting Mr Luse and Mr Jannuzi: "It is too early to define what their visit means" for efforts to resolve the 15-month-old crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The US suspects North Korea may have resumed reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. It has been trying, along with its allies, to resume six-way talks with North Korea to end the nuclear row. The six parties involved in the talks - the two Koreas, United States, China, Japan and Russia - met inconclusively in Beijing in August.
North Korea said on Saturday it had shown the US delegation its "nuclear deterrent" and hoped it would provide a basis for a peaceful settlement of the row.
But Mr Luse said: "It is premature, it is simply speculation to draw conclusions from any comments from DPRK [North Korea\] officials or any comments from unnamed persons in Washington."
Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted China's State Councillor Mr Tang Jiaxuan as saying he expected the next round of six-party talks to be held in February.
Mr Tang, a former Chinese foreign minister, told a delegation of senior Japanese ruling party officials the talks looked likely next month because North Korea and the US appeared to be closer to overcoming their differences.
US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell told Japan's NHK national television in an interview that was aired on Sunday that the US was committed to the next round of talks and he was confident it would be held in the "not-too-far future".