US, S Korean officials continue talks

Top US and South Korean envoys continued talks yesterday to ease North Korea's nuclear crisis as a US-led consortium is set to announce the suspension of a nuclear power plant project in the communist state.

Washington's leading official on North Korea, James Kelly, began a second day of talks behind closed doors with South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck here following "tense discussions" on Thursday, officials said.

During Thursday's two-hour formal talks, Kelly and Lee were working on the wording of a security guarantee for North Korea to entice Pyongyang back to nuclear crisis talks in December.

"They also had tense one-to-one discussions through several hours of informal talks during and after dinner yesterday without interpreters at hand," a foreign ministry source said.

"They are discussing detailed wording," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Sun-heung said Thursday, adding the process was in its "early stages."

But South Korean officials remained tight-lipped on the details of the discussion. So did Kelly, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

"I think I'm not going to answer any question today," Kelly said while entering the foreign ministry building in downtown Seoul yesterday.

In New York, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization supervising the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea was preparing to formally announce a one-year suspension of work yesterday.

The US-led consortium's planned suspension is closer to South Korea's position than that of US hardliners who wanted the project killed off, a senior US official said.

Under a ruptured 1994 nuclear safeguard accord, the US is supposed to meet North Korea's energy needs while a nuclear power plant is being built from a fund largely raised by South Korea and Japan.

But North Korea experts in Seoul have said the US-led consortium's widely-expected move would not have any major impact on the six-way nuclear talks that Kelly has been actively preparing for.

Washington has said it is ready to put into words a promise already made verbally not to attack North Korea in return for Pyongyang's pledge to scrap its nuclear weapons drive.

The letter will remain strictly confidential until both Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and China meet for a second round of six-way talks, which Kelly and Lee believe should take place in mid-December.

But sources close to negotiations said a copy of the proposed security assurance could be delivered to Pyongyang by a Chinese envoy later this month, before a new round of talks takes place.

Kelly, who arrived here Wednesday after visits to Tokyo and Beijing on a three-nation Asia tour, also met with top defense and foreign policy aides for South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun later Thursday.

Kelly was to return to Washington yesterday, where he will meet next week with Russia's top North Korean envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.

That will conclude Kelly's round of one-on-one talks with all four participants who engaged in the original round of three-day talks in Beijing along with the US and North Korea in August.