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North Korea talks continue as joint statement drafted

Negotiators tried to work out a joint statement on eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons program during a sixth day of talks yesterday, but differences remained over demands by the communist state for what it would get in return.

Deputy leaders of delegations from six governments met for five hours at a Chinese government guesthouse to examine a China-proposed draft statement, a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing talks.

Discussions yesterday focused on "what corresponding measures other parties will take" in return for the North's agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, South Korea's chief envoy said.

"It was a place where we could listen to each party's opinions on the draft," said Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon.

"We are trying to come up with an agreed statement which contains all the key points that have been discussed so far, but how long it will take remains to be seen," he said. Song said more meetings were planned today.

The chief US envoy, Christopher Hill, has praised the Chinese proposal as a "good basis" for future negotiations but cautioned that differences remained with North Korea on a resolution of the 2 1/2-year-old nuclear standoff.

Hill, an assistant US secretary of state, has met five times with the North Koreans during the talks and it wasn't known if he met with them again yesterday.

No end date for the talks has been set, and Hill said "it's going to take a while" -- noting the process requires translating texts into the five languages of the nations at the talks: Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

"I want to caution everyone that it's a lot of work to look at a document and go line by line by line," Hill said yesterday afternoon at his Beijing hotel. "Things are moving, we have to see how it goes."

The draft calls for the abandonment of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and nuclear programs that could potentially produce such arms, Kyodo News agency reported yesterday, citing an anonymous source at the talks. The draft also calls for normalization of US and Japanese relations with the North.

The Japanese side is dissatisfied with the draft because it fails to include a mention of its citizens the North has admitted abducting, Kyodo said.
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