S.Korea to discuss North's nuclear list with China

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's chief nuclear envoy goes to China on Tuesday for talks that could preface North Korea's return to international disarmament negotiations and the release of a long-delayed inventory of its atomic arms programme.

At the weekend, a U.S. nuclear envoy returned from Pyongyang with documents detailing the North's weapons-grade plutonium programme. Washington said this was an "important first step" in getting a full nuclear declaration.

South Korea's foreign ministry said envoy Kim Sook will be in Beijing for discussions on six-country nuclear talks, which have been on ice since North Korea missed an end-2007 deadline to provide the nuclear list.

North Korea is likely to make the declaration to China, host of the six-country talks, in the next two weeks, a South Korean official familiar with the process said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the diplomatic maneuvering.

A new round of the talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States will probably take place in early June, and the main subject of discussions will be verification, the official said.

North Korea was required in a deal it struck with the five other countries to provide a full accounting of its fissile material and nuclear weaponry as well as answer U.S. suspicions that it enriched uranium for weapons and proliferated technology to Syria.

If North Korea makes the declaration, the United States has promised to take it off its terrorism blacklist and remove sanctions that restrict Pyongyang from tapping into international finance.

Separately, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will make his first trip to China from May 27 to 30 since he took office in February, the presidential Blue House said.

In a "fact sheet" on the documents hand-carried on Saturday across the heavily armed border that divides the two Koreas, the U.S. State Department said the 18,000 pages covered three periods when plutonium was produced by North Korea for nuclear weapons.

The documents date back to 1986 and consist of the operating records of the Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear complex where North Korea has produced its stock of weapons-grade plutonium until it was shut down in July under a six-party agreement.

"After turning over the documents, the United States may then send a signal (to North Korea) that it is okay to submit the report (to China)," said Kim Sung-han, a Korea University professor who specializes in international relations.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by John Chalmers)