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North Korea has expressed its willingness to declare and disable all its nuclear programs before the end of this year, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator said Wednesday.

"North Korea has shown its willingness to declare (all its nuclear programs) and disable (its nuclear facilities) at the earliest date possible -- in five or six months or even within the year," the chief South Korean negotiator, Chun Yung-woo, said in a press briefing.

The step, if taken, will be in line with second phase measures under a February agreement, in which the communist nation promised to shut down and eventually disable its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

Chun said that the North has yet to make its position official within the six-nation talk process, saying his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, only mentioned it at their bilateral meeting held earlier Wednesday.

The six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambition resumed shortly after the meeting between Chun and Kim.

"North Korea did not mention this at the six-party head of delegations meeting, but Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said his country will declare all its nuclear programs without omitting anything at the bilateral meeting," Chun said.

Chun said that he therefore does "not expect to see any dispute" in future negotiations over which programs are subject to declaration, and added that North Korea has to "declare everything they have" including nuclear weapons and nuclear explosion devices.

The North Korean envoy's remarks came shortly after Pyongyang closed down its only working 5-megawatt reactor and four other nuclear facilities at Yongbyon under the February agreement after months of delay.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirmed the shutdown of the Yongbyon facilities while on a trip to Malaysia earlier Wednesday, saying, "We have verified all the five nuclear facilities have been shut down." A group of IAEA inspectors has been in North Korea since last week to verify the North's denuclearization actions.

The North's position also meets U.S. hopes of completing the disablement phase before the end of this year.

After two legnthy meetings with the chief North Korean envoy on Tuesday, Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator in the six-party talks, said he and Kim discussed ways to complete the process before the end of the year.

"I laid out my view on how this could be done, and I think we had a good discussion on that basis," Hill told reporters.

On Wednesday, he said the February 13 agreement calls on the North to declare and disable all its nuclear facilities, as well as nuclear programs, in the second phase, saying the there are two tasks.

"One is to come up with a comprehensive declaration -- and it's a comprehensive declaration -- of all nuclear programs. The second task is the disablement of these nuclear programs," he said.

BEIJING, July 18 (Yonhap News)