BEIJING – North Korea told South Korea on Wednesday that it wanted to disable all its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, meeting a U.S. request for a complete shutdown that would render the communist regime unable to easily make more nuclear weapons.

The North pledged in February to shut its sole operating reactor and dismantle the rest of its nuclear program in return for 1 million tons of oil and political concessions.

It shut down the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor over the weekend, and North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator offered Wednesday to meet the year-end deadline for a complete shutdown, South Korean chief negotiator Chun Yung-woo said.

“North Korea expressed its intention to declare and disable (all its nuclear facilities) within the shortest possible period, even within five or six months, or by the end of the year,” Chun said at the opening session of six-nation talks in Beijing.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan also told South Korea during a one-on-one meeting that his country was “willing to declare all its nuclear programs without omitting a single one,” Chun said.

The pledge of total disclosure is key because the United States accused North Korea in 2002 of having a uranium enrichment program that it has never publicly acknowledged. The U.S accusation sparked a yearslong international standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program.

The atmosphere of the two-day talks was “as bright as Beijing’s skies and was more serious and businesslike than any other time,” Chun said after a meeting of all six lead envoys on a sunny day in Beijing.

The main U.S. envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, declined to give specifics of the discussions, but said China was expected Thursday to provide a target date for North Korea’s declaration and disablement of its nuclear programs. A more specific schedule for each step is expected to be the subject of future negotiations, Hill told reporters.

“There was a very good and positive discussion on all of the issues,” he said.

North Korea also appeared to abstain from raising new issues that could scuttle the process. Hill said the discussions were substantive and “there were no broader irrelevant themes brought up.”

Hill emphasized that a declaration would have to include the weapons that North Korea has already built, in addition to any other radioactive material. North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear detonation in October.

Earlier Wednesday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said North Korea had shuttered the four remaining facilities at its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, in addition to its reactor that was shut down Saturday.

Some of the facilities _ which include two long-dormant construction sites for larger reactors _ have also been sealed by inspectors, Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

North Korea has begun receiving 50,000 tons of oil from South Korea as a reward for the shutdown, and is to eventually receive the equivalent of a total of 1 million tons for disabling its nuclear facilities under a February agreement among the six countries.

Because North Korea only has the capacity to receive 50,000 tons of oil a month, Hill said negotiators talked about giving other energy-related aid to comprise the remaining 950,000 tons so the process does not drag on.

Associated Press writers Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, and Jae-soon Chang and Mari Yamaguchi in Beijing contributed to this report.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)