CHINA: U.S. envoy to six-party talks says there has been no progress so far on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme

The top U.S. negotiator in thorny nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea said on Tuesday (December 19) there had been no progress in the first day of talks and appeared downbeat about prospects for the rest of the week. "I think I would be hard pressed to tell you any progress was made. The meeting got underway - which is good because we haven't had it for 13 months. So I guess in that sense there is progress. But certainly in terms of implementing the Joint Statement I didn't feel I could see too much progress from yesterday," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill said before leaving his Beijing hotel for a second day of negotiations on scrapping the communist state's nuclear arms programme. Hill was not optimistic about being able to walk away with concrete progress. "We would like a deal. But we don't want to have a deal anymore than anyone else should want to have a deal. So if we don't get a deal from this, we don't," said Hill. But a nuclear North Korea was unacceptable, he said. "We made it very clear we are not going to live with their nuclear weapons. No country is going to accept that North Korea should have nuclear weapons. North Korea needs schools, health stations, roads, airports. They need a lot of things. They need food, electricity, they don't need nuclear weapons," said Hill. Monday's (December 18) opening meeting of envoys from the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia was the first of its kind in more than a year, and was held under the shadow of Pyongyang's first atomic test, which it conducted on Oct. 9. North Korea's envoy Kim Kye-gwan spelled out sweeping demands in return for scrapping its nuclear weapons, starting with the lifting of U.N. sanctions and U.S. financial curbs and a new nuclear reactor. Japan's envoy said that any progress made at the negotiations would depend on North Korea's move. "North Korea needs to think about what they need and what they want. Progress depends on them," said Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae. Washington and the other countries at the talks, want to see North Korea move towards implementing a joint statement agreed in September 2005 in which North Korea agreed in principle to give up nuclear weapons in return for aid and security guarantees. North Korea's Kim said his country would not consider acting on the September 2005 agreement until U.S. curbs on its external financing and U.N. sanctions were lifted. Washington imposed the financial curbs over a year ago after determining that Pyongyang was engaged in money-laundering and counterfeiting American currency. The U.N. authorised sanctions in October after condemning the North's nuclear test.

ITN Source | December 19, 2006

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