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North Korea will likely substantially disable its nuclear facilities well before the year-end deadline specified in a multilateral deal signed in early October, a senior aide to President Roh Moo-hyun said Wednesday, dismissing concerns over Pyongyang's intention to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The remark by Baek Jong-chun, chief presidential secretary for foreign, security and unification policy, comes amid concerns among skeptics that North Korea is using the six-party nuclear talks to buy time without real intent to abandon its nuclear weapons programs, in which the impoverished North Korean regime invested heavily in the past decades, despite progress in recent rounds of the nuclear talks.

Conflicting reports emerged recently about the chances of North Korea achieving its commitment by year's end.

Chief U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, has expressed the hope that the process will start on Nov. 1 for completion by the end of the year while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov predicted that the North will have difficulty disabling its facilities by year-end.

Baek said the communist nation is likely to substantially disable its main nuclear reactor in mid-November prior to the deadline of the end of this year specified in its nuclear agreement with the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan.

Last week a team of U.S. nuclear experts visited North Korea to review the North's move to disable its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, which it shut down in the initial phase of the Feb. 13 deal. In return, Pyongyang received a shipment from Seoul of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.

The aide also said that it would take at least five years to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War and sign a peace treaty.

"There is a controversy over whether North Korea has the will to denuclearize. If I say it is 100 percent sure that the North has the will, it would be a lie. In my personal view, however, it has a clear will for denuclearization," Baek told a forum in Seoul.

South Korea is set to host a new round of working-level talks among the six nations to implement the agreement at the truce village of Panmunjom next week.

Baek stressed that Seoul's efforts to bring permanent peace to the peninsula is on track, citing the deal between the leaders of the two Koreas.

They agreed in a summit early this month to "work together to move forward having the leaders of the three or four parties directly concerned meet on the peninsula and declare an end to the war." The two Koreas remain technically in the state of war as the Korean war ended in an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.

"The South and the North both recognize the need to end the current armistice regime and build a permanent peace regime," the summit agreement reads.

The inter-Korean compromise on declaring an end to the war would mean a "political and symbolic" announcement by involved nations.

"It will be a turning point in the way to a peace pact for the leaders of related nations responsible for the issue to gather and make the declaration," he said.

He said the fact that North Korea accepts talks by three or four parties about the peace process indicates that North Korea has recognized South Korea as a key party in the talks.

"A few months before the summit, the North called for talks with the U.S. on easing tensions in the West Sea. Up until that time, the North denied that the South was a party directly concerned," Baek said.

But the summit deal made it clear that Seoul is a key party in discussing war and peace on the peninsula, he said, adding the Koreas will decide whether China will be included in the process.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, meanwhile, said in Washington Tuesday that "it would make sense" for China, a signatory to the armistice along with the North and U.S., to join the talks for the "ultimate peace arrangement in the Korean Peninsula".

SEOUL, Oct. 24 (Yonhap)