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SINGAPORE : The US and North Korea on Friday ended two days of discussions ahead of "difficult" wider talks next week aimed at breaking a deadlock on verifying Pyongyang's disarmament, officials said.
"Today was focussed on verification and what we need to do to make sure that there are no misunderstandings as we go forward," the top US nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, told reporters.
The United States and North Korea differ on what was agreed when Hill made a trip to Pyongyang from October 1-3 to try to save a shaky February 2007 disarmament deal.
After reaching an apparent agreement on verification procedures, the US announced it would drop the communist North from a terrorism blacklist, and the North reversed plans to restart its plutonium-producing nuclear plants.
However, North Korea, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, insists it never agreed to samples of atomic material being taken away.
It says the outside verification of its nuclear inventory, submitted in June, will involve only field visits, confirmation of documents and interviews with technicians.
"Sampling is a method of verification and so we need more discussions on that matter," North Korea's envoy, Kim Kye-Gwan, told reporters after meeting Hill, according to a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
Hill said nothing was agreed on but the two sides exchanged views primarily on the "level of specificity and what verification is going to look like."
The question is, how much North Korea, which is also known as the DPRK, is willing to put on paper, Hill said.
"There will be a sense that if sampling is put on paper, then the DPRK may feel it's losing there. If it's not on paper, we'll be losing and so we get to a kind of tough patch in terms of how to express these things where everybody feels they are winning."
According to a report by the Korean news agency Yonhap, Kim said he and Hill had detailed discussions about how to conclude implementation of the October agreement, including how to verify the North's declared nuclear inventory.
"We came to know what are issues of mutual interest and concern and will continue discussions in the future," Kim said, according to the report.
US officials said Friday's talks were to begin at about 10:00 am, but witnesses said Kim did not leave the North Korean embassy residence until the afternoon.
Asked why, an embassy staff member said "I have no idea," before telling AFP not to call again and hanging up the phone.
"They said they were waiting for an instruction or something from Pyongyang", Hill said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the meeting in Beijing of all six nations involved in talks on the North's nuclear programme aims to finalise a plan allowing for outside verification of Pyongyang's disarmament.
The six-nation talks are expected to resume Monday even though host China has not confirmed the date, South Korea's foreign minister, Yu Myung-Hwan, said in Seoul on Thursday.
"China seems to be waiting for North Korea's final answer after the Singapore talks," Yonhap earlier quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
Yu said the six-party meeting -- grouping the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan -- would try to clarify arrangements to verify the North's nuclear declaration.
It would also fix timetables for completion of disablement work at the North's Yongbyon complex, and the delivery of the remainder of the energy aid which the other five parties promised as compensation.
"I am sure the negotiations will be as usual: They will be difficult," Hill said.
Hill was to leave Singapore on Saturday headed to Beijing via Seoul. He said he would be meeting with Russia's representative on Sunday.
- AFP /ls
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