The US rejected a North Korean offer to freeze its nuclear programs during three days of multiparty talks, saying only full dismantlement was acceptable, the chief US negotiator said yesterday.
The fifth round of six-party talks, involving the US, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and host China, ended yesterday, with little apparent progress towards their goal of ending North Korea's nuclear program.
US negotiator Christopher Hill described the talks as a useful stepping stone, but he also underscored the difficulties ahead as negotiators seek agreement on when and how North Korea will declare its nuclear programs, open them to international inspection and then permanently dismantle them.
In a breakthrough deal agreed to in September, North Korea said it would disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees. It is also demanding a light-water reactor for civil use.
"Our view is that stopping their programs is simply something they have to do," Hill told reporters at the end of the three-day session aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.
"We don't want to get into a situation where they stop the programs -- in short freeze the programs -- and then expect us to compensate for a freeze," he said.
He said North Korea proposed negotiating a freeze of its nuclear programs in return for a compensation package.
"We realized how much work we have ahead of us," he said of the latest talks.
In the coming weeks, the six countries were likely to form groups of experts to negotiate the "technical underbrush" of a potential disarmament agreement, Hill said.
A Chinese statement at the end of the talks said the parties agreed to hold a second session of the fifth round at the earliest possible date.
"The parties reaffirmed that they would fully implement the [September] joint statement in line with the principle -- commitment for commitment, action for action," the statement said.
Hill said it may be difficult to reconvene next month, because of other commitments.
The fifth round of talks made clear the continuing friction between Washington and Pyongyang.
The North Korean envoy to six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programs criticized US sanctions on firms accused of weapons proliferation, saying the action was hindering progress during discussions.
"We have raised very seriously the financial sanctions which were imposed by the US on [North Korea]," envoy Kim Gye-gwan told reporters outside the regime's embassy in Beijing.
"These kind of sanctions are in violation of the joint statement we have adopted and is going to hinder the implementation of the commitment we have made," he said.
Washington imposed sanctions last month on eight North Korean companies accused of acting as fronts for sales of banned missile, nuclear or biological weapons technology.
Kim said the two sides agreed to hold bilateral talks on the issue.
FIGHTER JETS
Meanwhile, two North Korean fighter jets briefly flew over South Korean waters yesterday, the South's military said.
Approaching from the west, the Northern jets entered the South-controlled airspace over seas south of the inter-Korean maritime border at 1:13pm and immediately flew back to the North after six South Korean jets approached, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The North Korean fighters did not respond to radio warnings from the South, the office said.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS