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SEOUL: South Korea's chief nuclear envoy on Sunday admitted he was "not very optimistic" as he left for a new round of six-party talks on disarming North Korea.
Kim Sook said the talks, which are set to resume in Beijing on Monday, would focus on how outside inspectors can verify the North's declaration of its nuclear activities.
North Korea has already said it would not recognise Japan as a participant, throwing the meeting into confusion.
"On the prospects of the six-party talks, we will have to see, but I am not very optimistic," Kim told Yonhap news agency at an airport west of Seoul.
US chief negotiator Christopher Hill has also predicted difficult negotiations after two days of preparatory talks with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan.
On Saturday, North Korea said it would ignore Japan at the talks in protest at Tokyo's refusal to provide energy aid promised in a pact last year.
"We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame," the communist country's foreign ministry said in a statement.
It was unclear what effect the latest announcement would have on the talks.
The nuclear-armed North has frequently called for Japan to be excluded from the forum, which began meeting in August 2003 and has frequently come close to breakdown.
Under a 2007 pact involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia, the North agreed to disable facilities at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex and deliver a declaration of its nuclear activities.
In return it was to get one million tons of fuel oil or energy aid of equivalent value. About half has so far been delivered.
But Japan says it will not provide its 200,000 tons until the North accounts fully for Japanese nationals kidnapped by Pyongyang during the Cold War era.
The North has admitted it seized Japanese to train its spies and in 2002 let five of them return. It says the others are dead but Japan believes they are still alive.
- AFP/yt
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