US, NKorea to hold nuke talks with in Singapore

WASHINGTON—A top US envoy will meet in Singapore Tuesday with his North Korean counterpart as part of negotiations to end the hardline communist state’s nuclear weapons drive, US officials said Friday.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey played down chances of a breakthrough in the new round of talks between US negotiator Christopher Hill and North Korea’s Kim Kye-Gwan, but hoped they would make progress.
“He does intend to have a meeting with Kim Kye-Gwan in Singapore,” Casey told reporters, adding the meeting would be early next week. The State Department said later the meeting would be on Tuesday. Hill and Kim will discuss “issues related to the declaration (on all nuclear activities), and the continued process of disablement as well as discussions about the next phase from there,” Casey said. But he lowered expectations of a breakthrough.
“Chris will not be coming home with a declaration in his briefcase or suitcase. This is part of a continuing process. Certainly we hope to make continued progress on it,” he said. “But I’m not led to the believe that there is any reason to suspect that this is a decisive point in those discussions,” Casey said. “We do not anticipate there will be any final resolution of the issues at this meeting.” Hill, who has been touring Asia this week, said in Jakarta he may meet his North Korean counterpart soon, fueling speculation that an agreement is close. The two envoys last met in the Swiss city of Geneva on March 12 and 13. A 2007 deal, involving the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia, offers North Korea energy aid and major diplomatic and security benefits in return for full de-nuclearisation. Under the current phase it was to disable its main plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear activities by the end of 2007.
The North, which tested an atomic weapon in October 2006, says it submitted the declaration last November. But the United States says it has not accounted for a suspect uranium program or for alleged proliferation to Syria.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill will hold the talks with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, on Tuesday in Singapore, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. Hill will then travel to Beijing to report on the talks. China, an ally of the communist North, has been the host of stalled six-nation disarmament talks.
The North missed a Dec. 31 deadline to produce a nuclear inventory, and while other work to disable a nuclear reactor has continued, the delayed document has soured the atmosphere of talks meant to shutter the North’s nuclear weapons program and improve the poor nation’s standing in the world.
Earlier Friday, Hill said the standoff has gone on long enough. “We don’t have a lot of time. We really need to move on,” Hill said in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The main sticking point is a dispute over what the North is required to reveal about nuclear know-how or material it may have passed or sold to other nations. The North has successfully developed at least one nuclear program and tested a device before it began serious bargaining with the United States, Russia and Asian neighbors. The accounting is also supposed to address allegations that the North secretly worked to produce weapons-grade uranium, in addition to a nuclear plutonium program it has already revealed. Casey said that the U.S. does not anticipate a final resolution to the matter at the meeting. But he said it was an important step in moving the process forward.
The U.S. does not expect Hill will “be coming home with a declaration in his briefcase,” Casey said. “Certainly we hope to make continued progress on it, but I am not led to believe that there is any reason to suspect that this is a decisive point in those discussions.”
Earlier, U.S. officials had said Hill would not see his North Korean counterparts unless the issue of the accounting, or declaration, of the North’s nuclear program was resolved. The meeting is a sign that the United States thinks it can strike a deal with the North to produce an acceptable declaration, and also that the North remains interested in the talks despite recent tension between North Korea and South Korea.
North Korea test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles a week ago, in apparent response to the new South Korean government’s tougher stance on Pyongyang. The North also threatened to turn South Korea to “ashes” in a pre-emptive strike, responding to remarks by South Korea’s top military officer that Seoul could target suspected North Korean nuclear sites if there were signs of a pending atomic attack.

—Agencies