US Presses North Korea to Dismantle Nuclear Programs

By Ryu Jin
Korea Times Correspondent

BEIJING _ The six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs are making progress, but major differences remain still unresolved, chief negotiators said Friday.

``There still are differences, difficulties and contradictions, but it’s essential to carry on the process of talks,’’ China’s Vice Foreign Minister and chief delegate Wang Yi was quoted as saying by his spokesman Liu Jianchao.

Wang also described the atmosphere of Friday’s discussions as ``positive and beneficial,’’ according to Liu, who took a very cautious attitude about the possibility of the second round of talks ending without a joint statement.

South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister and chief delegate Lee Soo-hyuck also revealed the difficult course of drafting the statement among various parties. ``We are exerting efforts to draw up the statement, but it might not be issued if we fail to agree,’’ he told a news conference.

Lee added the ongoing round was likely to come to a close on Saturday.

North Korea, the United States and the four other nations involved had an intense plenary session on the third day of the nuclear parley, as it entered the final phase of announcing results.

High on the agenda were, according to sources, such substantial items as the exchange of verbal pledges of the North’s nuclear dismantlement and other countries’ security guarantee; a tradeoff between Pyongyang’s nuclear ``freeze’’ and other negotiating nations’ ``compensation’’; regularization of the six-nation talks and creation of a working group for contact in between the main conferences.

But the six parties are expected to undergo a tough stage of negotiations at the last moment, as the two main sides, the U.S. and the North, are refusing to budge an inch from their positions.

The U.S. wants a ``complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling (CVID)’’ of Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, including the suspected uranium-based one. But, the North insists it would give up only its nuclear ``weapons’’ program, while keeping those for ``peaceful’’ purposes.

Though authorized officials refused to confirm, the U.S. and Russian delegations were even said to have walked out of a vice chief delegates’ meeting on Friday afternoon as they faced enormous difficulties in ironing out differences.

The issue will be further discussed in Saturday’s extra session of all parties, which will try to find some common ground for the joint statement.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr