The main US envoy at talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program urged delegates yesterday to start hashing out the substantive details of the communist nation's disarmament or risk making no real progress at this round.
Before the start of the third day of six-nation meetings, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was cautious about the prospects for the negotiations.
"At this point I don't want to say I am pessimistic or optimistic," Hill told reporters. "I just don't know where we are going to end up or when we are going to end up."
More than three years of meetings have failed to prevent North Korea from continuing to develop its nuclear program, culminating in the communist nation's first-ever atomic detonation on Oct. 9.
No end date has been set for this week's talks, but Hill stressed that delegates from the six countries -- China, Japan, Russia, the US and the two Koreas -- should start working on a draft agreement if they hope to make any progress.
"If we are going to get to the end of the week and have something tangible, I think we probably need to be working at something on paper in the very near future," he said.
Hill has declined to release details of any US proposals to the North, but a news report yesterday said the US had outlined a process whereby Pyongyang would first freeze its nuclear program, followed by inspections and eventual dismantlement.
Washington would be willing to give the North a written security guarantee -- a pledge that it wouldn't seek to topple the regime by force -- as soon as it allows the return of international nuclear inspectors, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing "diplomatic sources" at the talks.
South Korean nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-woo declined to confirm specifics, but said the ideas were simply "an official detailed and concrete proposal" of what the sides had previously discussed.
Hill was to hold a second one-on-one meeting with the North Koreans later yesterday, and all chief delegates were expected to gather yesterday afternoon with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
The North began this week's talks restating a catalog of its long-held demands, emboldened as many experts predicted by its confirmed nuclear status -- and raising doubts about an imminent resolution of the standoff that began in late 2002.
Chun said yesterday there was still "quite a gap in opinions between the related countries."
"Today, we hope to begin real discussions on narrowing that gap," he said. "Every party has shown their cards and we are discussing how each party would prioritize" their demands.
US and North Korean financial experts met for five hours yesterday for a second time separately from the arms talks to discuss the financial sanctions issue.
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