North and South Korean delegations to this week's six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions agreed at a meeting yesterday that solid progress needs to be made during the upcoming discussions, while the American representative predicted it likely wouldn't be the last round of negotiations.
The 100-minute meeting was led by South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, said Bae Young-han, a spokesman for the delegation from Seoul.
"They have agreed on the need to make substantial progress" at this round of talks, said Bae, the director general for press and public relations at South Korea's Foreign Ministry. He said the delegates discussed "many issues," but would not give any details.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency cited Song as saying that the two sides "agreed to come up with a framework to realize denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." It did not elaborate.
Song also said the two Koreas agreed to maintain bilateral contact throughout the talks, and to cooperate to bring results, according to the Yonhap report.
Earlier this month, Seoul offered Pyongyang a new incentive to the ongoing talks -- 2 million kilowatts of electricity by 2008 after infrastructure is built if the North agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons.
The latest round of six-nation talks also involving the US, China, Japan and Russia are set to begin on tomorrow.
"I wouldn't expect this to be the last set of negotiations," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top American delegate, told reporters after arriving in Beijing. "The negotiations have been in suspension ... for over a year, so we have to see where we go with these. We would like to make some measurable progress."
He did not indicate what Washington considers that to be.
"It's going to take a little time, it's going to take a lot of work," Hill said. "But we come here in a real spirit of trying to make some real progress."
North Korea said earlier this month it would end its 13-month boycott of the talks after being reassured by a US envoy that Washington recognized its sovereignty.
Three previous meetings hosted by Beijing have failed to resolve the nuclear standoff, sparked in 2002 after US officials accused the reclusive Stalinist regime of running a secret uranium enrichment program.
Pyongyang has repeatedly said its nuclear weapons programs are a "self-defensive deterrent force" against what it calls hostile US policies.
In February, the North publicly claimed it had nuclear weapons and has since made moves that would allow it to harvest more radioactive material for bombs. While it hasn't performed any known nuclear tests that would confirm it can make a functioning atomic weapon, experts believe Pyongyang has enough weapons-grade plutonium for about a half-dozen bombs.
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