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NKorea ready to discuss nuke disarmament

BEIJING - North Korea is ready to discuss the initial steps of its nuclear disarmament, the country's main envoy said Thursday as he arrived for international talks on the communist nation's atomic weapons program.

"We are prepared to discuss first-stage measures," Kim Kye Gwan said after arriving in Beijing for the six-nation negotiations set to start later Thursday.

However, Kim said any moves by North Korea would be determined by the United States' attitude.

"We are going to make a judgment based on whether the United States will give up its hostile policy and come out toward peaceful coexistence," he said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill on Thursday denied a report in a major Japanese newspaper that the United States and North Korea had signed a memorandum last month agreeing on Pyongyang's first steps toward its denuclearization.

Asahi Shimbun, citing U.S. and North Korean officials which it did not further identify, said Thursday the memorandum of understanding called for Pyongyang to begin closing a nuclear reactor while the U.S. starts providing energy assistance.

"We did not sign anything," Hill told reporters, adding he was hopeful of progress in the current round of talks.

"If we're successful we could get to the point where we are discussing technical matters at working groups," he said.

No end date has been set for this round of talks, but Hill said the Chinese hosts expected the talks to last a few days and the sides would start reviewing a draft agreement Friday.

The latest nuclear standoff with the North started in late 2002 after Washington accused Pyongyang of having a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 deal between the two countries. North Korea kicked out nuclear inspectors and restarted its main reactor, moves that culminated in the country's first atomic test detonation in October.

Although the U.S. and key North Korean allies China and Russia backed U.N. sanctions after the nuclear test, Washington has since engaged in a series of diplomatic overtures that have drawn praise from Pyongyang.

The main U.s. envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, went to Germany last month to meet North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye Gwan, and the North later said the sides had reached an unspecified agreement. The specifics of what they discussed haven't been made public.

Washington also has held separate talks on financial restrictions it has placed on a Macau-based bank where the North held accounts, accusing it of complicity in the regime's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering. Blacklisting that bank has scared off other financial institutions from dealings with the North for fear of losing access to the U.S. market.

The North had earlier demanded the financial restrictions be lifted for it to disarm, and refused to talk about anything else at the last nuclear talks in December.

The lack of progress at the arms negotiations has raised the issue of the credibility of the talks. Since 2003, they have produced only a single agreement in September 2005 on principles for the North to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and pledges that Washington won't seek the regime's ouster.

Negotiators said taking the first steps toward implementing that agreement would be key at this week's talks, which bring together China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas.

"The real success will be when we complete the full September '05 statement, not just when we start," Hill said after arriving in Beijing. "We're not going to finish that this week. We'll just maybe take a good first step."

The U.S. envoy said Washington was "ready to implement all of the joint statement," including economic and energy aid, but declined to give specifics.

Before leaving Tokyo for Beijing, Hill said there were positive signs at the Germany meeting but that he expected "some rather hard bargaining" in Beijing.

"This round of the six-party talks could be called a watershed," Japan's envoy Kenichiro Sasae told reporters. "It's important that we take concrete steps."

The White House is keen to prove it isn't recreating Washington's 1994 deal with North Korea made under former President Clinton that the Bush administration has harshly criticized for its failure to hold the North accountable.

Seeking to stem such criticism, Hill emphasized Wednesday that a new disarmament plan would be different from the 1994 U.S.-North Korea pact because it would include other regional powers.

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I'd read this but it's all bullshit. The only reason they'd be willing to discuss anything is because they haven't been in the news for a while...

Still, there's a little hope...A world alliance chirp sounds much better than a world war chirp if you ask me...

N. Korea talks resume on positive note

BEIJING - South Korea's nuclear envoy said Friday that a Chinese draft agreement ” with North Korea accepting in principle the initial steps for its disarmament ” offered a good start for discussion. But the main U.S. envoy said there was still much work to do.

Envoys from six nations are trying to agree on steps to implement a September 2005 deal in which North Korea pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees. The 2005 deal ” the only one to emerge since negotiations began in 2003 ” was a broad statement of principles that did not outline any concrete steps for dismantling North Korea's nuclear program.

"It's good as a basis for negotiations, but I don't want to predict whether there will be smooth negotiations," South Korea's Chun Yung-woo told reporters Friday ahead of the second day of talks in Beijing. He declined to give any details of what the draft contained.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill gave no details on the draft, but said Friday he was anxious for progress in the slow-moving negotiations.

"We haven't discussed it yet but that is what we will be doing first thing this morning ... In these processes you often start discussing things and you move to the written form and that is always a challenge," he told reporters.

The Chinese presented the draft after the first day of meetings Thursday, during which the North agreed in principle to take initial steps toward its eventual nuclear disarmament.

A South Korean official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing diplomacy, said China circulated a draft proposal. The official gave no details, but other delegates said earlier that the agreement would outline initial steps for implementing the 2005 accord.

Such an agreement would set the stage for the first tangible steps in more than three years of negotiations.

In his comments Thursday, Hill said that the new proposal would be "a set of actions that would have to be taken in a finite amount of time." He declined to give specifics, but said moves would occur in a matter of weeks.

"The delegations are coalescing around some of the themes that we believe should be the basis for a first step in implementing" the 2005 agreement, he added.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Washington she was "cautiously optimistic" that the implementation of the agreement could begin.

At the last round of talks in December, in the wake of North Korea's Oct. 9 underground nuclear test, the communist nation refused even to talk about its nuclear programs. Instead, Pyongyang demanded the U.S. lift financial restrictions targeting alleged North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering.

Since then, the U.S. and North Korean nuclear envoys held an unusual one-on-one meeting in Germany last month where differences between the sides were apparently discussed, although no details of any concessions have been made public. Pyongyang and Washington held separate talks in Beijing late January on the financial issue, although it has yet to be resolved.

Unlike in the December talks, negotiators Thursday "were able to make progress in discussing denuclearization," Hill said.

The North's chief negotiator had said before the talks began that his country was "prepared to discuss first-stage measures" toward nuclear disarmament.

"We are going to make a judgment based on whether the United States will give up its hostile policy and come out toward peaceful coexistence," Kim Kye Gwan said on arriving in Beijing for the meeting at a Chinese state guesthouse.

American experts who visited Kim in Pyongyang last week said North Korea would propose a freeze of its main nuclear reactor and a resumption of international inspections in exchange for energy aid and a normalization of relations with Washington.

The North, which suffers from chronic power shortages, is also seeking electricity supply or an annual import of at least half a million tons of heavy fuel oil ” the amount it had been promised under a Clinton-era denuclearization deal with the U.S.

North Korea and the U.S. agreed in 1994 for Pyongyang to freeze its plutonium-based nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid. The North promised to eventually dismantle the facility following construction there of two light-water nuclear reactors for electricity ” a type more difficult to divert for weapons use.

However, that deal fell apart in late 2002 after Washington accused North Korea of a secret uranium enrichment program. The North expelled international inspectors and restarted its reactor, and is believed to have amassed enough radioactive material for at least a half-dozen bombs.

The six-nation talks ” involving China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas ” began in August 2003, but the North has twice boycotted them for more than a year. The latest was over a U.S. decision to blacklist a Macau bank where the North held accounts, saying it was complicit in the regime's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

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