US, DPRK meet again as talks enter 4th day
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-07-29 16:50

The United States and North Korea met for a fourth time in talks that Washington says have so far been useful and revealed some common ground, but not enough to produce any significant breakthrough, AFP reported.

As wider international talks on halting North Korea's atomic weapons programs entered a fourth day, US envoy Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-gwan sat down once again to narrow the wide gulf between them.

Despite softer rhetoric, North Korea has retreated to its long-held reservations about US proposals to end the dispute, particularly the timing of concessions and rewards to North Korea.

The US proposals would require North Korea to pledge to dismantle -- not just freeze -- all its plutonium and uranium weapons programs before receiving "non-nuclear energy assistance," including oil and food, as well as security assurances.

Hill nevertheless said his three previous meetings with Kim this week had proved worthwhile and they would continue to seek ways to push the process forward.

"So far it has been very useful to be here but I think when we start putting ideas down on paper that means we enter a new phase and we will have to see how successful that is," he told reporters as he left his hotel for the meeting.

"I think we will probably continue the discussions we had yesterday and the discussions we had yesterday involved our ideas about how to get to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and their ideas," he said.

"I am not saying they are identical. We have some of their ideas that we did not feel usable. But we have some of their ideas that very much corresponded to some of the ideas that we have. So you know, it is a negotiated process."

The New York Times reported on its website Friday that the US had presented North Korea this week with evidence for the first time that it had obtained uranium enrichment technology from Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

One official was quoted as saying "they argue with us about it."

North Korea has long admitted to using spent plutonium fuel to make nuclear bomb fuel but has always denied having a uranium-enrichment program.

Unlike the three previous rounds of six-party talks, no end date has been fixed for this round, and Hill said no time had been set to deliver any joint document to be adopted by all six nations.

"It might be today, it might be tomorrow, it might be next week. We are here for the long haul, we are here until the next progress," he said.

An agreed joint statement failed to materialize at the three previous rounds of talks that also involve China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

"We will discuss how to deal with it (a statement) on the basis of progress in the US-North Korea talks," chief Japanese delegate Kenichiro Sasae said.

"We are expected to enter such a process eventually as the talks reach a climax."

Citing two Bush administration officials, the New York Times said the first two principles on any joint document should be a commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and a commitment that North Korea would not transfer nuclear technology to any other state.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice counseled patience.

"I would not expect that out of this round of the six-party talks, we're going to have a solution to this problem," she said.

North Korea abandoned the six-way talks in June last year, complaining of hostile US policy, but returned after a 13-month hiatus -- enticed in part by a softer US approach.

Also on the table this time is a South Korean offer to provide the North with 500,000 tonnes of rice and some 2,000 megawatts of electricity if it abandons its nuclear ambitions.

In Vientiane for an ASEAN meeting, North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun said "we are trying to make real progress in the six-party talks" and praised Seoul's energy aid offer.

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