Tokyo: A team of US experts will begin disabling North Korea's nuclear facilities on Monday, the US envoy to nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang said, marking the biggest step the communist country has ever taken to scale back its atomic program.

Top US envoy to the North Korea nuclear talks, Christopher Hill, also said that US lawyers had begun working with Pyongyang to remove the communist regime from Washington's list of countries sponsoring terrorism. "By Monday morning, they will begin dismantlement," Hill said. "It s a very big day because it's the first time it's actually going to start dismantling its nuclear program," he said.

The North already shut down the reactor in July, and promised to disable it by year s end in exchange for energy aid and political concessions from other members of talks on its nuclear program: the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. Disabling the reactor would mark a further breakthrough in efforts to convince the North to scale back its nuclear program.

The country conducted its first-ever nuclear test in October of last year. Hill said that the US hoped to disable North's uranium enrichment program by the end of the year, not just its plutonium-production facilities at Yongbyon. Hill said he hoped to start talks with North Korea "in the next two weeks" over the list of facilities, another promise made by the regime under a February 13 agreement, and that it should include programs other than the ones at Yongbyon, as well as nuclear materials.

Source : PTI