Delegates from six countries resumed talks yesterday on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, looking at a Chinese proposal on how to verify the secretive regime’s claims about its atomic program.
A dispute over verification has been the latest snag in the long-running negotiations intended to bring an end to the nuclear activities of North Korea, which tested an atomic bomb in 2006.
The regime appeared to accept the verification process in October as part of a broader agreement to disable its nuclear facilities, but has since said it will not let international inspectors take test samples out of the country.
“We want to complete a verification protocol,” said Christopher Hill, the top US envoy to the negotiations, which have offered the North energy aid and diplomatic concessions in exchanging for stopping its atomic program.
“We also want to complete a schedule for energy and a schedule for disablement,” Hill said before yesterday’s talks.
“Our plan is to get all three done,” he said.
Delegates said China had presented a proposal for the verification process at the start of the day’s talks.
China engaged in a series of one-on-one consultations with the other participants to discuss the draft, as the envoys and their teams prepared for “a long day,” diplomatic sources said.
“[Verification] is the issue that the parties are concentrating their discussions on,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) told a regular briefing.
“China is working with the rest of the parties [and is] proposing initiatives. The parties have also had in-depth discussion around these proposals and initiatives,” he said.
The latest round of negotiations began in Beijing on Monday, likely marking a last bid by the outgoing George W. Bush administration to tackle one of the most intractable items on its diplomatic agenda.
The talks, which were launched in 2003, bring together North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
The countries appeared to make a breakthrough last year, under which Pyongyang agreed to disable facilities at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex and reveal its atomic activities.
The deal — which also called for the delivery of 1 million tonnes of fuel oil or energy aid of equivalent value — has hit multiple snags.
But in October, after an apparent agreement on verification procedures, the US said it would drop North Korea from a terrorism blacklist, and the North reversed plans to reactivate its plutonium-producing nuclear plants.
“We need to have intense discussions about verification,” the chief South Korean delegate to the talks, Kim Sook, told reporters before yesterday’s session.
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