By Park Song-wu
Korea Times Correspondent


BEIJING _ Six top envoys decided to have another meeting on Saturday, brushing aside speculation that the six-party nuclear talks would come to a rupture, a South Korean delegate said.

The meeting on Friday was supposed to deal with the results of contacts between Washington and Pyongyang and draw a roadmap toward how to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

But it lasted only 40 minutes, sparking guesswork that the talks would break down.

South Korea’s deputy envoy Cho Tae-yong, however, denied the speculation, saying the top six delegates will reconvene. He underlined that the talks now reached a ``new phase’’ in which the six parties will discuss how to produce substantive results.

``Throughout dozens of bilateral talks, we came to understand that there are many differences as well as common points,’’ Cho told reporters. ``I think now we have entered a new phase in which we will talk about how to produce detailed results of the talks.’’

In the morning, the top U.S. envoy and his North Korean counterpart held their fourth meeting of this week on the sidelines of the six-party talks.

Details of the Washington-Pyongyang meeting were not available immediately. But Christopher Hill, the top U.S. delegate, said he found Pyongyang’s ideas very much corresponding to some of Washington’s.

``We had some of their ideas which we did not feel were usable, but we had some of their ideas that very much correspond to some of the ideas we have,’’ Hill said.

The Seoul delegation, which has emphasized its role as a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang, held subsequent meetings with envoys from the U.S. and North Korea respectively in an apparent effort to bridge their differences.

``We are currently doing what we can do,’’ Song Min-soon, the Seoul envoy, told reporters. He declined to comment on the differences of the U.S. and North Korea, involving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted a delayed outcome of the talks.

``I would not expect that out of this round of the six-party talks, we’re going to have a solution to this problem,’’ she said. ``It took us some time to get there. People forget that the North Koreans have been trying to build the nuclear weapons since the late 1960s when they had cooperation from the former Soviet Union. So it’s going to take some time to change this circumstance.’’

No closing date of the talks, which began Tuesday, has been decided. The fourth round of talks would mark the longest process ever. The former three rounds of talks lasted only four days.

Russia’s top envoy, Alexander Alexeyev, left for Moscow on Saturday, leaving his duties to a deputy official. The news also had stirred a rumor that the deputy-level officials would continue holding the six-party talks. But it was confirmed that other five top officials will remain in Beijing.

North Korea and Japan have held no bilateral contacts since the beginning of the six-party talks. Song said he is trying to persuade the North Korean delegation to hold a meeting with the Japanese side. But he said that it is impossible to compel Pyongyang to have the contact because both parties have ``their own difficulties.’’

The Pyongyang-Tokyo relations recently turned sour after Japan argued that North Korea returned a wrong person’s remains, allegedly violating a promise of returning the remains of one of the Japanese citizens that Pyongyang abducted in the 1960s and 1970s.

im@koreatimes.co.kr