US, North Korea call on each other to give ground

The recess came after 13 days of talks failed to produce a planned statement of principles to guide renewed negotiations aimed at persuading the North to renounce nuclear weapons.

The delegations said talks would resume the week of August 29.

The US envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said talks stalled over the North’s demand for the statement to include a promise that it would receive a nuclear reactor. He said all five other delegations rejected that.

"We decided it was time to end it and go to recess, with the idea that they can go back and think about what they’ve been told, which is, they’re not going to get a light-water reactor," Hill told reporters.

He expressed hope that the North would drop its demand once its envoys explain the rejection, saying, "perhaps people back in Pyongyang need to hear it directly."

But the North’s chief envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, said that during the recess, Washington should "change its policy on not letting us have any kind of nuclear activities."

The dispute was "one of the very important elements that led us to fail to come up with an agreement," Kim said at a news conference in the North’s Embassy. He didn’t mention the reactor cited by Hill.

The nuclear stand-off erupted in late 2002 after Washington said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear programme in violation of a 1994 agreement to give up nuclear development. Pyongyang later withdrew from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons. A light-water reactor was promised to the North in the 1994 deal as part of a US aid package.

The latest round of talks is the fourth in a series arranged by China, which diplomats say lobbied North Korea aggressively to make a deal. The talks also involve South Korea, Japan and Russia.

Beijing is North Korea’s biggest ally and aid donor. But experts say Chinese leaders worry that letting Pyongyang acquire nuclear weapons could destabilise the region by encouraging South Korea and Japan — which China sees as its regional military rival point statement. It said the governments "reaffirmed that the goal of the six-party talks is the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner and agreed to issue a common paper to this end."

During the recess, the six governments "are supposed to maintain contact and consultations," said China’s chief delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. But he warned that even after they return from the recess, "I can’t say for sure that we will reach agreement." Hill said contacts between Washington and Pyongyang wouldn’t have to stop because of the break.

"Sure, we’re willing to be in contact," Hill said. "We will continue to share our views. We won’t let issues of protocol ... get in the way. We are going to work aggressively to take care of this problem."

North Korea says that in exchange for renouncing nuclear weapons, it wants economic and energy aid, a peace treaty and normalised relations with Washington. It also wants the United States to remove any "nuclear threat" of its own from the Korean Peninsula. The United States has some 32,500 troops in South Korea, but Washington says no nuclear weapons are deployed there and that it has no intention of invading the North.

Hill said North Korea wants its negotiating partners to provide a nuclear reactor to "demonstrate our commitment to their right to eventual civilian use" of nuclear technology.

Hill has publicly challenged the North’s insistence on being allowed what it says would be a peaceful nuclear programme. He cited its conversion of a reactor at Yongbyon that supposedly was built for research into one that Washington says can make fuel for atomic bombs.

Diplomats said earlier that the talks also snagged on the dispute over when the North would receive aid. Pyongyang wants concessions for freezing nuclear work and more later for dismantling, while Washington says it will give nothing until the programme is verifiably dismantled.

But Hill downplayed the seriousness of disagreements on such issues as aid and normalisation of relations.

"All of those the North Korean delegate and I agreed could be resolved," he said. "The deal-breaker was the question of denuclearisation and their desire to put the focus back on ‘re-nuclearisation’ via a light-water reactor." Negotiators have gone through four versions of a draft statement proposed by China.

Hill said the draft, which has varied in length from five to seven points, included a commitment for the North to return to the NPT and allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. North Korean leader Kim Jong II has said his isolated government would rejoin the non-proliferation treaty and admit international inspectors if the Beijing talks are successful.