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U.S. hopes for progress as six-party talks resume

Pallavi Aiyar

America's attitude will determine outcome: North Korea

Beijing: The s ix-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme began a new round here on Thursday, amid cautious optimism from all sides concerned.

The heads of delegations from the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China met at a state guesthouse in Beijing on Thursday afternoon followed by a plenary session that lasted an hour and a half.

During his opening remarks at the meeting, China's chief negotiator Wu Da Wei said he believed the intensive bilateral discussions between the parties over the last month to have laid "a solid basis" for this latest round of negotiations.

The main focus of this round of talks is to work out the means to implement a September 2005 joint statement in which North Korea agreed to give up its weapons in exchange for security and energy guarantees.

Joint statement

Ahead of Thursday's meeting, the chief U.S. envoy Christopher Hill told reporters that over the next few days, the specifics of moving towards that joint statement would be discussed.

"I don't want to tell you what aspects of the September '05 agreement we're trying to get implemented, except to say that when we do get a set of actions — if we do — it will be widely seen as a very solid, positive step toward implementation," he said.

North Korea's chief negotiator Kim Kye-kwan, who held unprecedented bilateral meetings with Mr. Hill in Berlin last month, said on arrival in Beijing that the DPRK was "prepared to discuss first-stage measures."

He added, however, that any progress during this round of talks would depend on the United States' attitude. "We are going to make a judgment based on whether the U.S. will give up its hostile policy and come out toward peaceful coexistence," Mr. Kim said.

In the meantime, Mr. Hill denied a report in Japan's Asahi Shimbun that North Korea and the U.S. had signed a memorandum in Berlin under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for aid.

"We did not sign anything," Mr. Hill told reporters, but added he was hopeful the Beijing talks would lead to tangible progress.

"If we're successful, we could get to the point where we are discussing technical matters at working groups," he said.

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