North Korea agrees to disable reactor by year-end

By Emma Graham-Harrison and Guo Shipeng

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea has agreed to disable the three main nuclear facilities at its Yongbyon site and declare all of its nuclear programs by the end of the year, in a deal hailed by Washington on Wednesday as a major step toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula.

Under the agreement reached between China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States, the isolated state will get aid equivalent to 950,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and Washington will move toward taking it off a U.S. terrorism blacklist.

"The DPRK agreed to disable all existing nuclear facilities subject to abandonment (in a February agreement)," according to a statement released in Beijing on Wednesday that used the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Despite the apparent progress, relations between the two Koreas at only their second-ever summit, occurring separately in Pyongyang on Wednesday, appeared to be strained, and analysts said it was unclear whether the nuclear deal would work in practice.

Under a breakthrough February deal, North Korea has shut down and sealed its Soviet-era Yongbyon nuclear plant and allowed U.N. atomic energy monitors back to the site in July.

Pyongyang, which conducted a nuclear test nearly a year ago and is believed to have enough plutonium to make at least eight or nine atomic bombs, has in return received shiploads of heavy fuel oil and held bilateral talks with the United States that could bring the fortress state out of diplomatic isolation.

Wednesday's statement, which followed the end of the six-party talks on Sunday, said that the disablement of the three Yongbyon nuclear facilities covered in the February deal would be completed by the end of 2007.

North Korea would also provide a "complete and correct" declaration of all its nuclear programs by then.