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North Korea nuclear talks enter uncharted territory

Posted on: Friday, 29 July 2005, 11:05 CDT

By Brian Rhoads

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea nuclear crisis talks enter uncharted territory on Saturday, with the six parties sitting down with hopes of drafting their first joint statement to cap the longest negotiating session yet.

The main protagonists, the United States and North Korea, appear as entrenched as ever, diplomats say, with Pyongyang sticking to its demands for security guarantees and aid and Washington insisting the nuclear programs be dismantled first.

Still, the first round of talks in more than a year has seen an unprecedented level of contact between the U.S. and North Korean sides, who have met for talks five times already this week after refusing to budge from scripted position statements in three previous rounds.

The talks have come a long way from the early days of the administration of George W. Bush, in which the president labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq, or even early this year when his secretary of state called Pyongyang an "outpost of tyranny."

This time the talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and the host nation, China, have remained open-ended. If lacking in major concessions so far, they have featured a more thorough airing of viewpoints that the parties hope could point to possible consensus. "I think there is a growing consensus that where we end up is denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, that is, no nuclear weapons, no nuclear weapons programs, in the Korean peninsula. No nuclear programs that can conceivably be nuclear weapons programs," U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill said.

The six parties would start drafting a joint statement on Saturday, to be spearheaded by China, a Japanese delegate said, adding talks were likely to last through the weekend.

Previous rounds have failed to secure joint statements.

LONG HAUL

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused Pyongyang of pursuing a clandestine weapons program, prompting it to expel U.N. nuclear inspectors.

On Feb. 10 this year North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons. It demanded Washington provide aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them. The United States demands the nuclear programs be abandoned first.

Hill said on Friday he was prepared for a long haul. "We have a lot of differences that remain, so I don't want to suggest for a minute that we are, you know, this is going to be easy," he said.

All sides are committed in principle to a nuclear-free peninsula. The crux of the disagreement is over timing, whether Pyongyang should receive the security guarantees and aid before it moves to scrap its weapons programs.

The North has also demanded Washington remove nuclear weapons from the peninsula. The United States, which keeps some 30,000 troops in South Korea, says it no longer has such weapons there.

Some diplomats suggest that whether or not a joint statement is reached at the fourth round of talks, the parties can still declare success due to the unprecedented level of contact between North Korea and the United States.

Source: REUTERS

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