North Korea digs in on day two of nuclear crisis talks

BEIJING - North Korea staked out a tough position on the second day of six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs, demanding US concessions as the other five outlined proposals for resolving the crisis.

But with an unusually high level of one-on-one contacts between the North and the United States and a new, open-ended format, the mood at the long-delayed fourth round of talks also including South Korea, Russia, Japan and China remained hopeful.

"During their bilateral contacts with the United States, the North Koreans demanded the United States remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula as part of mutual efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula," a diplomatic source in Beijing told Reuters.

Washington, which keeps more than 30,000 troops in South Korea, says it no longer has such weapons in the country.

Delegates held a plenary session lasting almost three hours on Wednesday at which they clarified their positions. The parties were holding a series of bilateral meetings in the afternoon.

China's Wu Dawei said after the morning session that all six negotiators had offered opinions on how to denuclearise the peninsula, Xinhua news agency said.

A South Korean official said Seoul had proposed that the six countries adopt a joint document with two sets of promises.

"These are: one, North Korea would pledge to dismantle its nuclear programs. The other pillar is the other countries would promise to normalise relations with the North, guarantee its security and to offer economic aid," the official told reporters.

And despite the North's hard line, US chief negotiator Christopher Hill said at the talks he would start work on normalising Washington's relationship with Pyongyang -- one of its key demands, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

 

STRATEGIC AND SUBSTANTIVE

But there was still no sign North Korea was any closer to taking the "strategic and substantive decision" that Japanese chief negotiator Kenichiro Sasae had urged it to make, to commit itself to scrapping its nuclear programs .

At the last round of talks in June 2004, Washington offered security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for the North agreeing to dismantle -- not just freeze -- its nuclear programs in a verifiable way.

But North Korea said on Wednesday the proposal was "not logical, and accepting it would be difficult," Kyodo news agency cited sources at the talks as saying.

In one-on-one talks with the United States on Tuesday, Pyongyang had denied having a uranium enrichment program, Kyodo reported, citing unnamed sources.

The North acknowledges having a program for enriching plutonium, which can also be used for manufacturing weapons.

Nonetheless, the two sides seemed to be taking a less confrontational approach this time than during previous six-party forums spread over almost three years.

At Tuesday's opening plenary session, Hill sought to reassure the North, which it had labelled just months ago as an "outpost of tyranny," that Washington considered it a sovereign state which need not fear American attack.

Three previous rounds saw no progress and a stalemate this time might prompt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations and open debate on possible sanctions, which China opposes and North Korea has warned would trigger conflict.

If the talks go well, the rewards could help the impoverished North out of diplomatic isolation and offer much-needed aid.

South Korea has said it would supply Pyongyang with 2,000 megawatts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the North's total power output, if it scrapped its nuclear plans.

Standard and Poor's raised Seoul's long-term foreign currency rating to A from A-minus on Wednesday, but said ties with the North would remain a constraint.

"It remains our view ... that the (six-party) talks will be protracted and inconclusive, or if they conclude, that DPRK compliance will be difficult to monitor," the agency said.

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

Early 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, a sequence that remains at odds with the US position.

- REUTERS