A third round of six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions will probably take place for four days beginning on June 23, South Korea said yesterday.
The two Koreas, the US, Japan and Russia have twice met with host China in Beijing without reaching agreement on dismantling the North's covert nuclear weapons programs.
"There is a consensus among the six countries on the dates, but it's not quite the stage to announce it," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters.
Working-level officials from the six countries will meet for two days immediately before the plenary meetings in Beijing, he said, adding that a formal announcement could come early next week.
Ban did not say what was holding up the announcement.
But in Tokyo, diplomatic sources said China had told other participants a new round would be pointless unless Washington and North Korea narrowed their differences.
"Stressing that the US and North Korea remain far apart, China is suggesting the possibility of postponing a third round of six-party talks," one source told reporters on condition of anonymity.
China insisted on the need for progress if the next round of talks were to be held, he said.
China's move may simply be an attempt to put pressure on the US and North Korea, another diplomatic source said.
"I would not say the next round of six-party talks would not be held this month. There is still a possibility of holding such talks this month," he said.
Analysts have doubts about the chances of making progress, given that neither of the protagonists -- the US and North Korea -- is expected to compromise before the US presidential election in November.
But North Korea may be forced to blink because it is likely to be concerned about how it will weather another severe winter with no compensatory fuel shipments from outside.
North Korea, for more than a decade, has been operating nuclear weapons development programs on and off. It is demanding compensation, including heavy fuel oil, from the other five countries and a non-aggression treaty from the US as a precondition to scrapping them.
Ban said South Korea will be joining a global partnership to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, first adopted at the meeting of the Group of Eight leaders in 2002.
The program is designed to dismantle and intercept movements of weapons and materials of mass destruction.
South Korea will not formally join a US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, an agreement among 11 countries to interdict and search shipments suspected of containing weapons of mass destruction equipment.
Ban said that was because it "may affect ongoing efforts to resolve the nuclear problem and exchange between the South and North Korea."
In Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, en route to a G8 summit in nearby Sea Island, told US President George W. Bush that North Korea appeared to have become more open to a deal on halting its nuclear weapons programs.
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