By Ryu Jin

Korea Times Correspondent

BEIJING - The United States and North Korea on Thursday discussed South Korea’s proposal to provide North Korea with energy assistance in return for a freeze on its nuclear programs.

Their bilateral meeting, the second in two days since the start of the second round of six-party talks here, came after the U.S. expressed support for Seoul’s mediation proposal.

``The U.S. and Japan expressed their support and understanding for the provision of energy for the North, once it starts a process to freeze its nuclear programs,’’ Lee Soo-hyuck, chief Seoul delegate to the six-nation parley, said in a briefing after the end of the second day of the six-party talks. Lee said that the freeze should lead to the dismantling of its nuclear programs in a complete, irreversible and verifiable manner.

Lee said that China and Russia made it clear they would join in with energy assistance.

North Korea, however, made no concrete comment on the proposal, Lee added. The North is suffering from a lack of energy supplies, putting top priority on the resumption of U.S. heavy fuel supplies suspended after the breakout of the nuclear crisis in late 2001. In Seoul, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said that a degree of understanding was attained among the parties concerned about the resumption of fuel supplies but who would pay for it has yet to be fixed, once the U.S. and the North agree to dismantle the latter’s nuclear programs.

According to sources, the participating nations by and large agreed to discuss the North’s uranium enrichment program or HEU at a working-level meeting. In the leadup to the ongoing talks, the HEU program was seen developing into a key potential spoiler of the talks as the North denied it has any HEU program, while the U.S. said that Pyongyang does.

The six participants had an intense discussion in an attempt to find common ground during a plenary session as they embarked on work to draw up the joint statement.

Showing a united front, Seoul, Washington and Tokyo have persuaded Pyongyang to accept their calls for a joint statement in which it pledges to abandon its nuclear programs, sets a date for a third round of talks and agrees to a working group to continue contacts between regular rounds of talks.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. State Department issued a report that described the North as ``one of the world’s most inhumane regimes.’’ There were no signs that this negative statement was making any impact on the six-party talks

The North Korean nuclear standoff began in October 2002 when U.S. officials claimed that the North admitted to having a clandestine nuclear weapons development program in violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr