Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal and rejoin a global treaty to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the first agreement in a three-year dispute with the U.S. over the program.

North Korea signed a joint statement in Beijing with the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, marking the first breakthrough in two years of talks, China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Dawei said. The U.S. pledged not to attack North Korea and affirmed it had no nuclear weapons in Korea.

The U.S. dropped its insistence that North Korea give up all atomic energy programs in return for a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsular and United Nations' access to the country. U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill had said on Sept. 14 North Korea should ``get out of this nuclear business.''

``I think the US could not disagree with a country's fundamental right to use of peaceful nuclear energy,'' said Koh Yu Hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul. ``On the other hand, the U.S. has managed to cede an agreement by North Korea to return to the non-proliferation treaty and to accept international inspection, thus taking the right steps toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsular.''

Assistance

The U.S. and its four partners in the negotiations agreed to provide energy assistance to North Korea in return for giving up its arms. South Korea reaffirmed its offer to provide 2 million kilowatts of electricity across the inter-Korean border, according to the joint statement.

North Korea claimed it had to the right to develop a peaceful nuclear power program in future, the statement said. The five nations agreed to respect this demand and will discuss providing light-water reactors to Pyongyang ``at an appropriate time,'' the agreement said.

``All six parties emphasized that to realize the inspectable non-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the target of the six-party talks,'' the joint statement said. ``The Democratic People's Republic of Korea promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the nonproliferation treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.''

U.S. delegate Hill, speaking at a press briefing after the agreement, defined an ``appropriate time'' as ``when North gets rid of its nuclear weapons and all of its existing programs and gotten back into the NPT with good standing with IAEA safeguards.''

The U.S. expects North Korea to ``move promptly,'' Hill said at the briefing. The North's Yongbyon reactor should be closed ``now,'' Hill said when asked.

The six nations agreed to resume negotiations in November to finalize details of the agreement.

Iran

The agreement with North Korea comes as the U.S. is trying to seek international support for its efforts to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear program. U.S. President George W. Bush had named Iran, North Korea and Iraq as part of an ``axis of evil'' because of their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sept. 17 in a speech to the UN General Assembly that Iran's nuclear program should be referred to the Security Council if diplomacy fails.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at the same forum Tehran would work with governments and companies to build ``confidence'' that its uranium enrichment program is for civilian power and not for nuclear arms as the U.S. claims.

Agreement

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said this morning he wasn't sure an agreement could be reached. The U.S. had insisted on scrapping partially-built nuclear facilities at Shinpo, and dismantling existing reactors, including the one in Yongbyon, from which North Korea this year extracted 8,000 spent fuel rods, a first step in processing plutonium that can arm warheads.

North Korean spokesman Hyun Hak Bong said on Sept. 16 the Pyongyang government would keep its nuclear weapons program if the U.S. didn't agree to allow it to build reactors.

``The two parties agreed to disagree and papered over the differences,'' Peter Beck, Seoul-based director of the Northeast Asia project for the International Crisis Group, said. ``It will take a long time before North Korea will be accepted as a responsible member of the international community, at least 2 years.''

Won't Agree

The fourth round of talks previously broke up Aug. 7 after the North demanded the U.S. withdraw nuclear weapons from within striking distance of North Korea and stood by its atomic power stance. Talks resumed after a 37-day recess. Three previous rounds of talks failed to produce an agreement.

Construction on the internationally funded light-water reactors came to a halt after North Korea admitted in October 2002 that it had broken a 1994 agreement with the U.S. that it would cease its nuclear weapons development program. The Kim Jong Il regime kicked out nuclear inspectors and withdrew from a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The U.S. and other participating nations offered food, energy and economic assistance as well as security guarantees for North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program, a package that Hill has called ``comprehensive and generous.''

South Korea in July pledged to build transmission lines and pylons to supply electricity from the South to houses and factories in the North.

North Korea, with a population of 22 million, has depended on outside aid since the 1990s, when more than a million people may have died from famine because of years of flooding, drought and economic mismanagement.

The UN said in July that North Korea is on the brink of famine again, with one in three people chronically malnourished and many forced to scavenge for ferns, acorns, grass and seaweed.

The North Koreans ``seem to be interested in the light-water reactor as a sort of trophy,'' Hill said Sept. 16. ``This is a country that is having trouble paying its bills; it's a country that is truly having profound economic problems. It seems to us that they should focus on some of these economic problems and not focus on such trophy projects as a light-water reactor.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Allen T. Cheng in Beijing at acheng13@bloomberg.net. Heejin Koo in Beijing at hjkoo@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: September 19, 2005 04:02 EDT