South Korea’s foreign ministry has given President-elect Lee Myung-Bak a report urging the disarming of North Korea by 2010, a news report said on Sunday. The ministry’s report to the transition team for Lee, who takes office next month, said a concrete disarmament schedule should be established in the first half of this year, the Yonhap news agency reported. The ministry had reported it would push to “complete the nuclear dismantlement by 2010 with all nuclear materials, including plutonium, and detonators to be taken out” of North Korea, Yonhap said. The ministry also hopes to begin separate talks - in time with the dismantling - to sign a peace pact and bring about a formal end the 1950-1953 Korean War, it said.
It was not clear whether the South Korean plan had been coordinated with other nations at the six-party nuclear disarmament talks on the North. Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment. The six-nation process has been stuck in limbo since Pyongyang missed a key December 31 deadline to disable its main nuclear facilities and give a full declaration of its atomic programmes. A hurdle was the North’s suspected uranium enrichment programme, which Washington says exists but Pyongyang flatly denies, negotiators say. “The disabling would be completed in March, given the time needed for removing nuclear spent fuel rods,” an unnamed diplomatic source told Yonhap. “The declaration issue should also be settled by then.”