N Korea to let US team visit nuke site

It would mark the first time outsiders have been allowed inside the reclusive Communist country’s nuclear complex since UN inspectors were expelled a year ago in the midst of North Korea’s confrontation with the US over its nuclear ambitions.

USA Today said the US delegation would include Sig Hecker, director from 1985 to 1997 of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which produced the first US bomb and still constructs weapons.

Hecker had been told he can visit Yongbyon, where the North Koreans may have reprocessed used fuel to make plutonium for a half dozen bombs, the paper cited members of the delegation as saying. By inviting Hecker to Yongbyon, the government of Kim Jong Il may want to prove it has nuclear weapons as a way of bolstering a tough negotiating stance, the newspaper said.

A South Korean foreign ministry official said Seoul was not a party to the visit and he was unsure what the delegation would do in Yongbyon or what specific facilities it would look at. ‘‘I would not want to put too much meaning to the visit,’’ he said. ‘‘It is difficult to use the visit as a gauge of the next round of six-party talks.’’

In the six-party talks, expected to resume soon, the US and its allies are trying to get Pyongyang to abandon the programme in exchange for aid and better ties with the West. North Korea acknowledged a secret programme to enrich uranium for bombs in 2002, according to US officials.

They said this broke a 1994 deal that froze North Korea’s nuclear programme, and the administration ended fuel oil shipments called for by the pact. The North then expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and apparently resumed its bomb-making efforts at Yongbyon.