NKorea talks resuming, to discuss nuke assets list

By TINI TRAN | Associated Press Writer

1:06 PM EDT, July 8, 2008

BEIJING - Talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program will resume Thursday after a nine-month lull, with a focus on verifying a list of atomic facilities provided by the communist nation.

Chinese officials said Tuesday the meeting in Beijing would be attended by representatives from all six countries that have been involved in the disarmament negotiations for nearly five years -- the United States, China, Russia, Japan and North and South Korea.

"We hope the talks will generate positive achievements ... to promote and usher the six-party talks into a new stage," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

Qin said the meeting was scheduled to run for three days, but that could change depending on the progress being made.

The negotiations had been on hold since October over North Korea's failure to provide a complete list of its nuclear facilities. But its June 26 declaration of assets and subsequent destruction of a nuclear reactor's cooling tower ignited hopes of a breakthrough in the talks.

In response to the list, the United States announced it would remove the North from a list of state sponsors of terrorism and relax some economic sanctions against the communist nation.

The top U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, said Tuesday the main goal for the discussions this week will be to agree on a procedure for verifying North Korea's nuclear facilities.

"I think it's an important week because we are shifting back to a six-party format," Hill said. "The main objective will be to work out the verification regime to complete phase two."

The process of verification would include site visits, documents and interviews, among other things, he said.

"Verification is the most important thing. We want to speed up the rate of disablement. Obviously the cooling tower is done, but we need to discharge the reactor," Hill said.

Hill said he had met with the North Korean delegation in bilateral talks before a scheduled meeting with his South Korean counterpart. He said he would have further bilateral talks with the other nations before the Thursday meeting began.

Signaling potential difficulties in the talks, North Korea said last week that it would not take further steps to dismantle its nuclear program until the U.S. and the other negotiating partners provide it with promised fuel oil and political benefits.

On Tuesday, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, told reporters "we certainly hope that there will be very thorough discussions" to make sure the North's denuclearization is on the right track.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said it "will take time" to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs.

"We have to persuade the North to realize without fail" its nuclear disarmament, Lee said in an interview with Japanese newspapers, according to his office.

Lee, the South's first conservative leader in a decade, called the North's nuclear list "insufficient" because it did not include details about atomic weapons. North Korea conducted a test nuclear explosion in October 2006.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea rejected any possibility of summit talks with the South, though Lee said he was willing to attend such a meeting to speed up the North's dismantling of its atomic facilities.

The North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said it was "preposterous" for Lee to suggest a meeting, accusing him of overturning previous agreements.

Pyongyang has been angered by Lee's harder line than previous South Korean administrations. He said he would review previous summit agreements to see if they are financially feasible, a stand that has led to a suspension of all government-level dialogue between the two states.

Lee "totally negated and ignored the summit meetings and declarations which were unanimously hailed and supported by the whole nation and world," the North's reunification committee said in a statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The Korean War ended in 1953 with a truce, not a peace treaty, which means the two states technically remain at war. Relations improved significantly under Lee's two liberal predecessors, who pursued detente with aid and concessions, but he opposes providing unconditional aid.

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Associated Press writer Jae-soon Chang in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.