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North Korea Talks Recessing, China Says

Posted on: Sunday, 7 August 2005, 00:00 CDT

BEIJING - Envoys to North Korean disarmament talks announced a three-week recess Sunday after 13 days of meetings, deadlocked over what the North would receive for renouncing atomic weapons and its insistence on retaining a peaceful nuclear program.

Talks are to resume the week of Aug. 29, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told reporters. However, he warned that even after the break, "I can't say for sure that we will reach agreement."

The suspension was announced after the chief envoys from the six governments met Sunday morning in a final effort to produce a statement of principles meant to guide future negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to give up nuclear development.

"During the recess, the six parties will report to their respective governments and study ways to solve the differences," Wu told reporters outside the building where the three-hour meeting took place.

"They are supposed to maintain contact and consultations during that recess," Wu said.

The chief U.S. envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, stood beside Wu for photos but made no comment. China, the meeting's host, issued a "chairman's statement" instead of the planned joint statement.

It said the governments "reaffirmed that the goal of the six-party talks is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner and agreed to issue a common paper to this end."

Diplomats say the talks are deadlocked over the North's insistence on retaining "peaceful nuclear activities" and what it would get for giving up its arms program.

Pyongyang says it won't give up such weapons until Washington discards its "hostile policies" toward the North, removes any nuclear threat from the Korean Peninsula and normalizes relations with the country's Stalinist government.

The North also wants aid in exchange for freezing nuclear development, and then more for dismantling the program. Washington wants to see the program verifiably dismantled before providing any rewards.

The dispute erupted in late 2002 after U.S. officials said the North admitted violating a 1994 deal by embarking on a secret uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang later withdrew from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons.

Hill met Saturday with Chinese and North Korean officials in what he said was an attempt to find ways to speed up the negotiations, but he said the meeting made little progress.

Hill on Friday challenged the North's insistence on retaining a peaceful nuclear program, pointing to its record of converting a research reactor for weapons use.

He was referring to the North's main nuclear complex at Yongbyon, purportedly built for research with Soviet assistance but later turned into the headquarters for the North's nuclear weapons program.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has said his isolated government would rejoin the non-proliferation treaty and admit international inspectors if the Beijing talks are successful.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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