U.S., North Korea see progress with nuclear talks

BEIJING — After conciliatory remarks formally launching the resumption of long-stalled six-party talks, U.S. and North Korean diplomats returned to one-on-one discussions yesterday on banning nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.

Speeches by leaders of delegations from the six nations involved in the negotiations displayed increased flexibility and determination to make progress, said a Chinese spokesman, Qin Gang. In their remarks, he noted, North Korea and the United States sought to emphasize their willingness to meet demands from the other side and seek common ground in the negotiations.

The North Korean delegation leader, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, repeated his government's determination to work toward what it calls "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." His counterpart, Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, repeated assurances that the Bush administration accepts North Korea's sovereignty and has no intention of attacking the country.

China, which has hosted and sponsored the six-party talks since they began in August 2003, often has urged the United States to soften its language and attitude toward North Korea to smooth the way for concessions. Similarly, Chinese diplomats said, China has repeatedly pressured North Korea, since it dropped out of the talks 13 months ago, to return to the negotiating table with willingness to seek agreement on dismantling its nuclear-weapons program.

Hill, who met with Kim on Monday and yesterday, has been willing to conduct bilateral meetings with North Korean officials, seen as a step in the direction being urged by China. In contrast, during the previous three rounds of six-party talks, U.S. officials had sought to emphasize multilateral meetings, while North Korea demanded one-on-one contacts as a way to signal equality.

In a sign of the many difficulties still likely to emerge, however, Hill said in an interview that Kim yesterday answered his question from the previous day about what North Korea means when it refers to "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Hill said Kim told him "denuclearization, to the DPRK," the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, "means eliminating nuclear weapons from North Korea, and from South Korea as well."

Washington and Seoul deny that any U.S. nuclear weapons are present in the South.

There was concern that the North Korean position could sour the atmosphere of cooperation so far. Participants in the six-party talks are the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

"We want to keep this fixed on the problem at hand, the problem of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons," said a senior U.S. diplomat, referring to North Korea's reference to including South Korea in the formula. "To go into South Korea can be problematic, if they want to go into areas relating to the U.S.' defensive nuclear umbrella."

Kim, a senior U.S. diplomat said, was expected to provide North Korea's response to a U.S. proposal put forward at the last round of talks, in June 2004, outlining a sequence of moves the United States would take if North Korea agrees to eliminate its nuclear-weapons program.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Correspondent Peter Finn in Moscow and staff writer Elizabeth Williamson in Washington contributed to this report.