North Korea talks look at new Chinese proposal
Posted: 09 December 2008 1259 hrs

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BEIJING: Delegates from six nations resumed talks Tuesday on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, looking at a Chinese proposal on how to verify the secretive regime's claims about its atomic programme.

A dispute over verification has been the latest snag in the long-running negotiations intended to bring an end to North Korea's nuclear activities, which tested an atomic bomb in 2006.

The regime appeared to accept the verification process in October as part of a broader agreement to disable its nuclear facilities, but has since said it will not let international inspectors take test samples out of the country.

"We want to complete a verification protocol," said Christopher Hill, the top US envoy to the negotiations, which have offered the North energy aid and diplomatic concessions in exchanging for stopping its atomic programme.

"We also want to complete a schedule for energy and a schedule for disablement," Hill said. "Our plan is to get all three done."

Delegates said China had presented a proposal for the verification process at the start of the day's talks. The latest round of negotiations began in the Chinese capital on Monday.

The talks, which were launched in 2003, bring together North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.

The nations appeared to make a breakthrough last year, under which Pyongyang agreed to disable facilities at its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear complex and reveal its atomic activities.

The deal - which also called for the delivery of one million tonnes of fuel oil or energy aid of equivalent value - has hit multiple snags.

But in October, after an apparent agreement on verification procedures, the United States said it would drop North Korea from a terrorism blacklist, and the North reversed plans to restart its plutonium-producing nuclear plants.

"We need to have intense discussions about verification," the chief South Korean delegate to the talks, Kim Sook, told reporters before Tuesday's session began.

This echoed comments by Japan's chief delegate Akitaka Saiki told journalists after Monday's talks.

"There is a big gap between North Korea and the remaining five countries over ways to verify," Saiki said.

About half of the energy aid promised to North Korea last yar has been delivered.

Japan has withheld its share until North Korea accounts fully for Japanese nationals kidnapped by Pyongyang during the Cold War, triggering North Korea's insistence that it would not recognise Japan in the latest talks.

"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 at the weekend.

- AFP/yb