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Main Six-Party Meeting Delayed Due to North Korea-US Bilaterals

Posted on: Thursday, 28 July 2005, 03:01 CDT

Excerpt from report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap

Beijing, 28 July: North Korean and US officials held another one- on-one meeting Thursday [28 July], a third day of the revived six- nation talks aimed at ending the communist country's pursuit of nuclear weapons development.

A scheduled main meeting of the six countries - the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia - was being delayed pending the end of a previously unscheduled North Korea-US contact, South Korean officials said.

After two days of large meetings attended by all delegation members, Thursday's meeting was set aside for the top negotiators only.

The North Korea-US meeting convened at China's state guest house Diaoyutai at 9 a.m. (0100 gmt), the South Korean officials said. It was their third one-on-one contact in Beijing this week on the sidelines of the main meeting.

This week's meeting, the fourth in its series, began on Tuesday after a 13-month suspension caused by a North Korean boycott. The North rejoined the dialogue table after a US assurance about its sovereignty.

All participants have confirmed that their common goal is to make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons but the two protagonists, North Korea and the United States, are "significantly far apart," said the chief South Korean delegate, Song Min-soon.

Other parties involved are South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

During Thursday's closed-door session, the chief negotiators will discuss how to coordinate each other's positions presented a day earlier and whether to adopt a joint statement, Song said.

The closing date of the talks has not been decided yet. [Passage omitted]

Source: BBC Monitoring Newsfile

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