North Korea nuclear talks end without agreement (Roundup)

Dec 22, 2006, 11:10 GMT

Beijing - Weeklong six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear programme ended Friday without a breakthrough.

Expectations for the talks in Beijing were low when they opened Monday after they had been stalled for 13 months, during which North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, but Christopher Hill, the lead US negotiator, raised hopes Thursday morning when he indicated participants had begun drafting a joint statement.

But members of the South Korean delegation told the Yonhap News agency Friday after the talks broke up that the gulf separating the United States and North Korea was so wide that the participants could not set a date for the next discussions.

According to a statement issued by the chairman of the talks, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, the lead Chinese negotiator, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed 'to reconvene at the earliest opportunity.'

Little progress has been shown in the more than three years of the nuclear talks, largely because of antagonism between Washington and Pyongyang. In September 2005, however, the six countries released a joint statement at the talks in which North Korea pledged to give up its nuclear programmes in return for security guarantees and aid.

In this week's talks, Wu said in his statement, the six countries 'reaffirmed their common goal and will to achieve the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula' and 'reiterated that they would earnestly carry out their commitments' under the September 2005 agreement.

Wu's statement said 'useful' talks were held on implementing the agreement and what the first steps toward carrying it out might be.

Hill said earlier that the North Korean side needed 'to show some seriousness.'

He said the delegation from Pyongyang had been ordered not to discuss movement on its nuclear-weapons programme until US financial sanctions against Pyongyang were lifted. Washington considers the two issues separate but agreed to the formation of a separate working group on the sanctions issue, which met Tuesday and Wednesday on the sidelines of the Beijing talks.

In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged negotiators at the six-party talks not to be diverted by peripheral issues like financial sanctions against Pyongyang.

'Diplomacy sometimes takes time, but we should not be diverted somehow by an issue that is clearly in another lane and is clearly being dealt with in a way that the North Koreans themselves asked that it be dealt with,' she said. 'We cannot be diverted from what we need to do in the six-party talks, which is to have the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.'

Asked Friday morning whether another round of talks would be held, Hill said, 'We will see the progress, and see whether it is valuable.'

   'Our purpose is the denuclearization,' he said. 'We'll have to evaluate this round in terms of whether we move towards the goal.'

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua Friday quoted Chun Yung Woo, South Korea's top negotiator, as saying any 'meaningful' progress in talks would depend on the negotiating stand taken by the North Koreans.