North Korea snubs nuclear monitors

INTERNATIONAL talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme stalled yesterday, envoys said, after the communist regime snubbed a Chinese proposal outlining how monitors could verify its past atomic activities.

North Korea was refusing to allow outside inspectors take samples from its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon — a key method of checking whether the country was honest in its accounting of its nuclear programmes.

China offered a proposal on the tricky issue but the top US negotiator, Christopher Hill, said North Korea was not compromising during talks on Wednesday.

“We did not make any progress today. Not at all,” Hill said after meetings with chief envoys from North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

“Most delegations were prepared to work on the Chinese text,” he said. “There was a consensus on how to move forward. That consensus was not shared by the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea.” “Differences were not narrowed,” said South Korea’s representative, Kim Sook.

It was not immediately clear how long the talks that began Monday would last. They were originally scheduled to run for three days, but the envoys were scheduled to meet again on Thursday morning, said a spokesman for the South Korean delegation.

Kim cited his North Korean counterpart as saying that samples were not currently an option because Pyongyang did not trust Washington.

Hill said the US was not trying to single out the North but was simply looking for a verification system that “works throughout the world... We’re looking for tried and tested ways of conducting verification.”

The six-party talks have taken place in fits and starts since 2003. In 2006, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test. It agreed to a disarmament-for-aid pact in 2007, but the process stalled in August by the verification standoff.