TOKYO, June 23: The top US negotiator predicted on Saturday that North Korea will shut its nuclear reactor within three weeks and that foreign ministers will meet in July to discuss the next steps in disarming Pyongyang.

Christopher Hill was upbeat after he paid a surprise 24-hour visit to the communist state to push forward a long-delayed deal for Pyongyang to freeze the Yongbyon reactor, the source of its weapon-making plutonium.

North Korea hailed his visit as “productive” and the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was set to go back to the country on Tuesday more than four years after being kicked out.

“We expect Yongbyon to be shut down after there is an agreement between the DPRK and the IAEA on how to monitor the situation,” Hill said, using the North’s official acronym.

“We do expect this to take place soon, within probably three weeks,” he said in Tokyo after briefing Japan on his trip at the end of a regional tour.

Hill hoped the next round of disarmament talks – involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States – would be held in early July with a first six-way talks of foreign ministers by the end of the month.

“What we are trying to get to is the ministerial (level), which we would like to have in the late July timeframe,” Hill said.

North Korea, which tested an atom bomb last year, in February agreed to a breakthrough six-nation deal to shut down its reactor in return for aid and diplomatic benefits.

But it had failed to comply due to a row over assets that were frozen two years ago but have finally been returned through a complex bank transfer involving Russia.

“The transfer of North Korean money from Macau into a Russian commercial bank has now been completed,” Mikhail Kamynin, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

The funds, believed to total between $20 and 25 million, were frozen by the United States at the Banco Delta Asia in the Chinese territory of Macau in 2005 on suspicion of money-laundering and counterfeiting.

In North Korea’s first substantive comments on Hill’s visit, a foreign ministry spokesman agreed on holding the six-nation talks early next month.

“The discussions were comprehensive and productive,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. Hill said he wanted the upcoming talks to discuss the next step in the six-way deal – permanently disabling the Yongbyon reactor and listing other nuclear programmes.—AFP