N.Korea, US seek to bridge gap on nuclear crisis

BEIJING - The United States and North Korea struggled yesterday to bridge differences over how to dismantle the North's nuclear programmes as six-party talks looked set to drag into the weekend.

The negotiations, which resumed this week after a 13-month hiatus, have seen the parties retreat to familiar territory, with North Korea demanding aid and security guarantees before scrapping its nuclear programmes and the United States insisting it scuttle those programmes first.

"Although the United States and North Korea have had in-depth discussions, my understanding is that they have not narrowed their differences to the extent that they can claim progress," a Japanese delegate said.

Still, the pattern of unusually frequent and lengthy one-on-one exchanges on the sidelines of the talks marks a shift in the US approach and has raised hopes for a positive outcome.

The two met again on Friday.

"The discussions we had yesterday involved our ideas on how to get to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and their ideas," US chief negotiator Christopher Hill said.

"I'm not saying they were identical ... but we heard some of their ideas which very much correspond to some of the ideas that we have," he said.

There was no word on the outcome of Friday's meeting, but South Korea's negotiator said talks, for which no end date has been set, were likely to extend through the weekend, a sign there was still no compromise.

"More negotiations will be needed before we can say something about the prospects of the meeting," Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean envoy Song Min-soon as saying.

All six countries - both Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China - later met briefly in a plenary session.

"The chief delegates will ... discuss what to do following the talks between the United States and North Korea," Japan's chief negotiator, Kenichiro Sasae, said.

Hill has expressed a desire to start drafting a joint document on Friday, setting out agreed principles that would form the basis for negotiating an eventual agreement. Joint statements have failed to materialise at three previous rounds.

Although Russian envoy Alexander Alexeyev said he would fly to Moscow on Saturday and that other delegates might return home for weekend consultations, Hill said he was prepared for a long haul.

"We'll keep at it as long as it's useful to keep at it."

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the US would not negotiate a bilateral deal with North Korea.

"That approach was tried and it failed," McClellan said.

The crux of the disagreement is over timing, whether the North should receive security guarantees and aid before it moves to scrap its weapons programmes, as it insists, or if it should move first, as US wants.

"It's not a matter of who goes first; it's a matter of a strategic commitment that the goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula is embraced by all," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her first comments on the negotiations.

"The question is do the North Koreans embrace that goal as well?," Rice said.

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

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when US officials accused the North of pursuing a clandestine weapons programme, prompting it to expel UN nuclear inspectors.

In February, North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons. It regularly demands that the US provide it with aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them.

- REUTERS