Progress slow at nuclear talks

The chief US envoy to talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme said today delegates would start work on a joint statement of principles, taking the negotiations into a “new stage”, but he said progress was slow and there was unlikely to be any agreement this weekend.

Work on a statement of “agreed principles” came as six-nation talks in Beijing stretched into an unprecedented fifth day and after US and North Korean diplomats held four sets of one-on-one meetings this week.

The top delegates from all countries at the negotiations – China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the US – headed into a meeting today, a South Korean official said.

“We will have a lot of discussion about text and to see if we can come to some kind of agreement,” said US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill as he left his hotel for the Chinese government guesthouse where negotiators were meeting.

“But I want to let you know it’s going to take a while. It is not going to be finished today or even tomorrow, because even though the text will be rather brief, they’re rather important too.”

The negotiations, renewed this week after a 13-month hiatus, have produced no breakthroughs and their most significant achievement appears to be that the Americans and North Koreans have continued to talk.

North Korea has not publicly commented on the talks’ progress. But it has also refrained from issuing the confrontational and sometimes bellicose statements that it has made during three previous rounds of talks, which began in 2003.

Hill said after a meeting with his North Korean counterpart, vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan, that they remained split over the North’s demand for US concessions before giving up its nuclear weapons programme and its insistence on having a peaceful atomic energy project.

“The fact that they’re continuing to talk to each other is by far the most encouraging sign,” said Peter Beck, the Seoul-based director of the North East Asia Project for the International Crisis Group, an independent think-tank.

Beck said the latest round of talks had continued because neither the North nor the Americans seemed to want to be blamed for scuttling the discussions by walking away.

The latest nuclear stand-off with North Korea was sparked after US officials said the North admitted in late 2002 to running a uranium enrichment programme - which could provide fuel for atomic bombs – breaking a 1994 deal with Washington.

North Korea has subsequently denied having such a programme and Hill said that its status was one of the sticking points in a resolution.

Hill said the North had also insisted it should have the right to use peaceful nuclear technology for power generation if it rejoined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The US maintains the North should not be allowed to do so because of proliferation concerns.

Russia’s top delegate, deputy foreign minister Alexander Alexeyev, went back to Moscow for business reasons but is to return to China early next week, the Russian Embassy says. Other members of his delegation were continuing to work at the talks.