U.S. envoy stays mum on N.Korea trip outcome

By Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - A senior U.S. envoy ended a trip to North Korea Friday aimed at saving a crumbling disarmament deal, calling the talks substantive but declining to say if he swayed the secretive state to give up plans to restart its nuclear plant.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill had been in Pyongyang since Wednesday seeking a deal that would allow monitors into North Korea to check claims it made about its nuclear program in exchange for better trading ties and better standing in the international community.

"I don't want to talk about progress," Hill told reporters in Seoul, South Korea's capital, saying he must first brief U.S. officials and other countries before releasing details.

"I don't want to say I'm satisfied," Hill said, adding he had lengthy and substantive discussions about a verification system.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said North Korea did not appear to halt efforts to restart its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant during Hill's visit and that equipment was still being taken out of storage and "returned to their original locations."

"The North Koreans continue to take some steps to reverse disablement of some of the Yongbyon facilities," Wood told reporters, refusing to say where he got this information. "I don't know what their actual intent is."

Ahead of the discussions, Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at South Korea's Sejong Institute, said progress could be made if Hill offered a flexible plan to inspect the North's nuclear facilities.

But Washington said it was offering no new concessions. Hill insisted the North must allow inspectors to check U.S. suspicions it had a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, which would give it another path to make a nuclear bomb.

South Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Sook, said after meeting Hill that there could be a new round of six-way talks to discuss what had happened in Pyongyang.

The nuclear agreement North Korea struck with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea in February 2007 seemed in peril after Pyongyang vowed last month to rebuild the aging Yongbyon plant, its source for weapons-grade plutonium, in anger at not being removed from a U.S. terrorism blacklist.

Washington said it would take the North off the terrorism list, bringing economic and diplomatic benefits, once a system had been agreed to verify Pyongyang's nuclear claims.

MONITORS EXPELLED

In late September, Pyongyang ordered the expulsion of U.N. monitors from Yongbyon and said it planned to start reactivating the plant within days.

Hill said he told the North Koreans that the move would be of great concern but that he had no information on any further steps Pyongyang might have taken to restore Yongbyon.

The energy-starved North started to disable Yongbyon last November under the deal. If it backs away, it stands to lose about half a million tons of heavy fuel oil, or aid of equal value, that had been pledged for previous progress it made.