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SINGAPORE: Efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear disarmament impasse are running out of time, a US envoy warned on Tuesday.
"I will be discussing the fact that we are kind of running out of time," US negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters before heading into talks in Singapore with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan.
"We're not looking for an agreement. I think we're looking to have a consultation on some of the issues that have kept us apart for several months and certainly I will be discussing them."
Washington has been pushing North Korea to come clean on its entire nuclear programme as a key step in a 2007 six-nation denuclearisation deal that also involves China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
The US State Department has played down the possibility of a breakthrough at the Singapore talks.
But South Korean media reports have suggested Kim could be prepared to hand over a document that addresses concerns about its alleged secret uranium enrichment programme and cooperation with Syria.
Hill and Kim last met in Geneva in mid-March.
The 2007 six-party deal grants North Korea – which tested an atomic weapon in 2006 – energy aid and major diplomatic and security benefits in return for full denuclearisation.
The current phase of the deal required the North to disable its main plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear activities by the end of last year.
The North says it submitted the declaration in November. But the United States says it has not accounted for an alleged secret uranium enrichment programme or for alleged proliferation to Syria.
Asked about a Japanese media report that said North Korea did not understand the US position, Hill responded: "No, it is not possible. They know precisely why, what the issues are and they understand that we didn't want to meet unless we could achieve something."
South Korea's Hankyoreh daily, which reported that a breakthrough could be in the offing, said the US had vowed not to make public the so-called "confidential minute" and not to exploit it for political purposes.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean foreign ministry official as saying there were expectations that Kim would "bring an answer acceptable to the US" with him to Singapore.
The talks coincide with increasing tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang. Conservative Lee Myung-Bak, who took office as South Korea's new president in February, has angered the North by adopting a tougher line on ties.
North Korea kept up the rhetoric on Monday, accusing Lee of pushing the peninsula closer to nuclear war and telling Seoul it should order the United States to withdraw its "nuclear weapons massively stockpiled in South Korea."
The US, Seoul's long-time military ally, says it withdrew the last of its atomic weapons from the peninsula in 1991.
On Thursday, North Korea announced it was suspending all dialogue with the South and closing the border to Seoul officials.
- AFP/so
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