BEIJING, July 18 (RIA Novosti) - North Korea reaffirmed its commitment to nuclear disarmament at six-nation talks on its nuclear program, which resumed in Beijing Wednesday, a Russian diplomat said.
"The North Korean delegation has reaffirmed the country's intention to work toward implementing earlier commitments," said Vladimir Rakhmanin, Russia's ambassador-at-large in the Chinese capital.
Envoys of North and South Korea, China, Japan, the United States and Russia convened for two days to negotiate further denuclearization steps, after the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed earlier Wednesday that Pyongyang had closed all its nuclear facilities as part of the February 13 deal that also envisions economic and diplomatic incentives for Pyongyang.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the secretary general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the North had shut down four facilities in addition to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor located 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Pyongyang. The shutdown of the reactor, a source of weapons-grade plutonium, was announced earlier this week.
The Communist state has received the first deliveries of 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil from South Korea for its thermal power plants, as an incentive for the reactor's shutdown, and is to eventually receive a total of 1 million metric tons from China, Russia and the U.S.
North Korea is now expected to declare an end to all its nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment programs, whose existence it never officially acknowledged.
Rakhmanin said the talks were taking place "against a favorable background" and that drawing up a timetable for further steps was important, but should not "weigh upon" the process.
The diplomat said Pyongyang had not advanced any additional demands.
The North seeks to improve relations with the U.S. and wants more assurances that South Korea will not deploy nuclear weapons, a source close to the negotiations said Wednesday.
"These are not demands or preconditions, but North Korea has highlighted the issues as its prime concerns," he said.
Unlike at the previous rounds of talks, Pyongyang has not so far mentioned the "hostility" of U.S. policies against the regime, the source said.
The North expects Washington to strike it off a list of countries sponsoring terrorism, and not to impose economic sanctions against the regime.
Talks received a further boost last month, when $25 million of North Korea's funds, previously frozen at the U.S.' request in a Macao bank over counterfeiting and money laundering suspicions, were transferred to Pyongyang.
The financial dispute had proved a stumbling block to the implementation of the February 13 deal. The funds reached Pyongyang in late June through the mediation of Russia, which had received assurances from Washington that it would not be subject to any sanctions over the transaction.
Pyongyang expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2002, and conducted its first nuclear bomb tests last October.
