By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter

With his administration's time fast running out, U.S. President George W. Bush may be ready to negotiate with North Korea and agree on a restricted nuclear verification program in the Stalinist state, according to a news report.

Separately, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a resolution Saturday urging the North to get back on the denuclearization track. The IAEA resolution was adopted at the nuclear watch dog's annual general conference in Vienna, Austria. It emphasized the importance of finding a diplomatic solution to help push along the North's denuclearization effort.

The IAEA resolution was adopted a day after Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, visited Pyongyang from Oct. 1 to 3 in a bid to hammer out a possible deal on a verification procedure.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), Saturday, the U.S. negotiator had ``substantive discussions'' with North Korean officials. And for a follow-up meeting, the U.S. State Department's Korea office director Sung Kim may pay a visit to Pyongyang in several days.

RFA said Hill may have informed Pyongyang officials that the United States was willing to step back and accept restricted nuclear inspection and verification. Until now, the Bush administration has been maintaining that Pyongyang grant international inspectors unfettered access and allow sampling at various sites suspected of carrying out nuclear activities.

The U.S. negotiator may have told North Korean officials last week that Washington States would agree to a limited verification and sampling procedure, one that would be restricted to Yongbyon ― but that Pyongyang would still have to allow inspectors to take samples from there to other countries including the United States for further testing.

North Korean officials, for their part, may have added a condition of their own, according to RFA, citing an unnamed diplomatic source. Pyongyang could have demanded that international inspectors be denied access to nuclear waste storage facilities at Yongbyon and that samples should be kept in North Korea.

Recent news reports have suggested that President Bush may be willing to negotiate on the nuclear verification procedure in the hope that an agreement can be reached before he leaves the White House early next year. North Korea, for its part, may be attempting to wait out the current administration, hoping that the next president might offer a better deal.

The North's denuclearization process has come to a standstill in recent weeks, with Pyongyang threatening to restart its plutonium reprocessing plant, apparently dissatisfied at Washington's reluctance to remove the Stalinist country from its list of terrorism-sponsoring states.

michaelha@koreatimes.co.kr