SEOUL (Reuters) - Five regional powers will hold talks with North Korea from Thursday on ending its atomic weapons plans and verifying an account of its nuclear programmes that the North presented in June, a South Korean envoy said on Tuesday.
The talks, the first in nine months, follow Washington'smove towards removing North Korea from a terrorism blacklistwhile calling on the secretive state to answer questions aboutproliferating technology and enriching uranium for weapons.
"The official schedule for the top envoys' meeting willstart in the afternoon of July 10," South Korean envoy Kim Sooktold reporters before heading to Beijing for the talks amongthe two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
In late June, the North presented a long-delayed account ofits nuclear weapons programme that contained information on itsplutonium production, but did little to address U.S. suspicionsof a secret uranium enrichment programme.
Yonhap news agency reported that North Korean nuclear envoyKim Kye-gwan had arrived in Beijing.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in October 2006,was required in a disarmament-for-aid deal to make thedeclaration and start taking apart its Soviet-era nuclear plantat Yongbyon by the end of 2007.
It had completed most of the disablement steps by the endof last year. On June 27, in a symbolic move to show itscommitment to the deal, the reclusive state invited in foreignmedia to witness a controlled blast that brought down thecooling tower at its nuclear reactor.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Jonathan Hopfnerand Bill Tarrant)
