Updated: 12:23 PM EDT
U.S. Envoy Plans to Leave Korea Talks Monday
By BURT HERMAN, AP
BEIJING (Sept. 18) - International talks seeking to persuade North
Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program seemed at a critical point
Sunday night as the main U.S. envoy praised a new Chinese proposal but
said he planned to head home Monday regardless of the outcome.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill called the proposed
agreement a "good draft" and said all the delegations at the six-nation
talks would meet Monday morning to give final comments.
Hill declined to reveal specifics of the proposal. Russia's envoy said
earlier that it acknowledged North Korea's right to a peaceful nuclear
program after disarming -- but it was not known if that draft had been
revised.
Washington previously rejected allowing the North any kind of atomic
program, saying Pyongyang's decades of relentlessly pursuing a nuclear
bomb meant it could not be trusted.
In February, the North publicly claimed it had nuclear weapons, but it
has not performed any known tests that would confirm it can make them.
Experts have said they believe the North is capable of building about
six bombs.
Hill said he expected to leave Beijing by Monday afternoon, the seventh
day of the latest round of negotiations.
"Everyone knows each other's positions, everyone knows the agreement,
everyone can almost recite it from memory at this point, so I'm not
sure we have to do too much talking," Hill said. "I think we have to
sort of ... put the cards on the table and see where we are."
He said the new draft was "a good effort to try to bridge the remaining
differences, which I believe are difficult but certainly not
insurmountable."
That was a much more optimistic stance than Hill took a day earlier,
when he said several countries at the talks had problems with the
document's wording.
"It's a good draft for all concerned, and I think it's especially a
really great opportunity for" North Korea, he said.
Asked if there could be an agreement Monday, Hill answered: "I hope
so."
Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae also was more optimistic.
"There is still a chance of reaching an agreement," he said.
North Korea has not directly commented on China's proposal, but after
the host nation presented its first version Friday, a spokesman for the
Pyongyang regime denounced efforts to get it to give up its nuclear
program without concessions by the United States.
Participants have offered the North economic aid, security guarantees
from Washington and free electricity from South Korea in exchange for
dismantling its weapons program.
North Korea also has demanded to be given a light-water nuclear reactor
for generating electricity before disarming, promising to open such a
facility to co-management and international inspections.
Pyongyang was promised two light-water reactors -- believed to be more
difficult to use in diverting radioactive material to making nuclear
bombs -- under a 1994 deal, but that agreement fell apart in late 2002
after the U.S. government said the North admitted working on atomic
weapons.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo, who hosted a banquet for the
chief delegates Saturday night, urged the envoys to end the "Cold War
state" on the Korean Peninsula and accept what he described as the
"most realistic scenario for the relevant parties to reach an accord,"
China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.
9/18/2005 09:29:21
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