North Korea says wants light-water reactors

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea's nuclear negotiator said on Saturday that the North should be provided with light-water reactors in exchange for disabling its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

Kim Kye-gwan was speaking to reporters at Beijing airport after the latest round of six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programme ended the previous day without setting any new deadline.

"To eventually dismantle the nuclear facilities, light-water reactors are needed," China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Kim as saying, adding that North Korea would carry out the obligations it had undertaken in previous rounds.

Kim also said Pyongyang would need to consider how far trust had been built before deciding whether to include details of its nuclear weapons programme in a declaration of its nuclear secrets it is required to provide in the next phase of the deal, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.

The United States and North Korea had reached an agreement, now defunct, in 1994 to freeze the Yongbyon facility in exchange for two relatively proliferation-resistant light-water reactors.

It is more difficult to extract weapons-grade nuclear material, such as plutonium, from light-water reactors than from North Korea's ageing graphite reactor.

Xinhua cited Kim as saying after arriving back in Pyongyang that the latest round of talks had achieved "good results".

"We believe that development will be made in the future," Xinhua quoted him as saying.

Delegates from the two Koreas, United States, Japan, Russia and China met for three days in Beijing, and they decided that working groups would meet before the end of August to discuss how to press forward with a disarmament deal.