Nuclear talks with North Korea stall; US negotiator disappointed

Dec 21, 2006, 18:29 GMT

Beijing - Talks on North Korea's controversial nuclear weapons programme got bogged down Thursday at the end of day four of the six-party talks in the Chinese capital.

US negotiator Christopher Hill told journalists that he was disappointed about how the negotiations were going.

'It's hard to think about being optimistic right now,' Hill said.

The North Korean delegation had been given instructions not to speak officially about dismantling the country's nuclear weapons programme so long as the question of US financial sanctions against illegal money transactions was not resolved.

There had been no work completed on a draft joint communique that Hill had expected in the morning. 'Today was not a day where we registered much progress. ... We were hoping to make more progress than we made,' Hill said in his hotel.

He was expecting the talks to break down Friday and would return to the United States on Saturday.

It would be decided after that when a new round of talks would take place.

The visibly exhausted negotiator's negativity was in stark contrast to his comments Thursday morning when it looked like the first progress was being made.

The US and other delegations at the talks had worked hard to move the talks forward, Hill said.

'I would like to see (the North Koreans) engaged a little more,' he said. 'If they are ready, we can get it done.'

There had been several bilateral meetings between the US and North Korea during the day which were expected to continue on Friday.

'North Korea had a great deal of difficulty to talk about anything else but the Banco Delta Asia,' Hill said.

Banco Delta Asia is a Macao-based bank that the US accused of laundering money for the North Korean regime and on which Washington imposed sanctions in 2005.

The working groups had 'good discussions and a lot of exchange of information' over two days.

A new meeting was planned for January in New York. 'The good news is it's an ongoing process,' Hill said.

Hill stressed, however, that he was not in Beijing to discuss Banco Delta Asia, but rather to discuss the implementation of the September 2005 Declaration in which North Korea agreed in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions to accept economic and energy aid as well as security guarantees.

'We need to have denuclearization: with denuclearization a lot of things become possible, without it, frankly speaking, very little is possible,' Hill said.

North Korea, the US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia took part in the talks that resumed Monday after a year-long hiatus.