South Korea suggests North may miss nuclear date

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea may miss the year-end deadline under an international disarmament deal to provide a full accounting of its nuclear weapons programme, South Korea's foreign minister indicated on Thursday.

"We are aiming for the initial end of the year deadline, but we may need to be a little more flexible," Song Min-soon said in a speech to a business chamber in Seoul, according to a spokesman for his ministry.

Isolated North Korea agreed with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States to make the nuclear declaration and disable its ageing nuclear arms complex in exchange for aid and an end to the cold shoulder it receives from most of the world.

Song said the nuclear negotiations were at a critical juncture but disablement, which also needs to be completed by the end of the year, has been moving forward.

Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the nuclear talks, said on Wednesday after making the highest-level U.S. visit to the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex that Pyongyang has not yet agreed with Washington what nuclear activities it must disclose.

Hill, now in Beijing, is scheduled to meet Chinese officials on Thursday.

U.S. officials say they expect North Korea to declare it has produced about 50 kg of plutonium and they also want the secretive state to answer questions of having a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons.

A U.S. nuclear team is at the Soviet-era Yongybyon complex, about 100 km, north of Pyongyang to oversee steps to disable the reactor at the heart of the North's nuclear arms programme.