N. Korea Likely to Destroy Cooling Tower Soon

North Korea is expected to turn in a list detailing its nuclear stockpile to China around next Thursday and demolish a cooling tower at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon on either next Friday or Saturday, according to a diplomatic source.

"As far as I know, the United States and North Korea reached a consensus that Washington will soon take steps to remove Pyongyang from the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations after North Korea submits the nuclear declaration around June 26 to China,” the source added.

North Korea will then blow up the outdated cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

With regard to this, some experts predict that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is scheduled to visit Seoul June 28 following her visit to Japan to attend the G8 foreign ministerial meeting June 26-28, may visit North Korea to view the demolition of the cooling tower.

Meanwhile, the Japanese daily Asahi reported yesterday that the chief nuclear negotiators of South Korea, the United States and Japan eased their stance and agreed to accept North Korea’s long-delayed nuclear declaration even though it is exempt from its nuclear activities on the condition that the communist country later reports its weapons development within a certain period of time.

The newspaper quoted a source from the nuclear meeting as saying that, “During their meeting in Tokyo, the envoys from South Korea, the United States and Japan agreed to further discuss measures and incentives to make Pyongyang commit to the disclosure of its weapons program during the three stages of denuclearization in the near future.

The three countries are said to be planning to draw up documents to receive North Korea’s confirmation of nuclear weapons programs and discuss the related measures during the six-party talks.

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