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BEIJING : Top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said Tuesday there were no new obstacles to the eventual dismantling of North Korea's weapons programmes after meeting with Pyongyang's head negotiator here.
"I think we're all in the same ball park," Hill said after bilateral meetings with North Korean envoy Kim Kye Gwan, one day before six-party talks are set to resume in the Chinese capital.
"I tried to advance the ideas we need on an overall time frame for the second phase (of denuclearisation)...we had a good discussion, at this point there are no show stoppers."
The resumption of the six-party talks that also include South Korea, China, Japan and Russia comes after North Korea shut down its Yongbyon reactor at the weekend, under the first phase of a disarmament deal reached in February.
Hill expressed hopes that the details of the second phase could be hammered out by the end of the year.
"In my view we'll try to wrap this up in the calendar year of 07, so we can get onto an end game," Hill said.
The six-party talks began in 2003 with the aim of convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear programmes, and assumed a fresh sense of urgency after the Stalinist state carried out its first atomic bomb test in October last year.
Under the February accord, North Korea said it would close Yongbyon and allow inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog back into the country in return for 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil.
The first shipments of oil arrived from South Korea on Saturday, and the North immediately closed the reactor.
The UN inspectors also returned to North Korea on Saturday and confirmed Yongbyon had been shut down.
North Korea will eventually receive another 950,000 tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid if it admits to all its nuclear programmes and permanently ends them.
One of the major sticking points is that the United States and others say that North Korea has been secretly operating a highly enriched uranium programme in parallel with its plutonium-making facility at Yongbyon.
Both highly enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs.
North Korea has never admitted to making the highly enriched uranium.
Nevertheless, the closing of Yongbyon has been widely welcomed around the world, including by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and China, which is the North's closest ally and the permanent host of the six-nation talks. - AFP/ch
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