Envoys gave up hope yesterday of immediately bringing North Korea back to talks on its nuclear program, going home empty-handed after coming together for a private initiative in Japan.
North Korea, which last year declared it had nuclear weapons, has shunned six-nation disarmament talks since November. It is protesting at US sanctions on a bank the US accused of money-laundering and counterfeiting on its behalf.
The North sent a negotiator to a closed-door security conference in Tokyo but failed to win a one-on-one meeting with the US, which insists the communist regime commit to resuming formal negotiations.
"It's really not our job to get them back to the talks. It's their job to get back to the talks," said Christopher Hill, the US chief envoy to the stalled negotiations, who was due later yesterday in Seoul.
"Once the DPRK comes back to the talks, then we can look back and say we made progress in Tokyo," Hill told reporters, using the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
South Korean chief negotiator Chun Young-woo, who met for about two hours overnight with his North Korean counterpart, hoped Pyongyang would now be less stubborn in demanding an end to sanctions on the Macau-based bank.
"We have found here that North Korea has not changed but North Korea has heard a common voice from all other countries participating in the six-party talks," Chun said.
"If North Korea returns home with a certain understanding that linking the issue of [sanctions] to six-way talks is neither in line with its own interest nor helpful in resolving the problem, this kind of multilateral contact in Tokyo ... would act positively for the resumption of six-way talks," Chun said.
The forum, which has been organized periodically by the University of California at San Diego since 1993, was aimed at reinvigorating the stalled talks through informal dialogue.
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