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The United States has insisted North Korea must give up its nuclear weapons during two days of intensive closed-door talks in Beijing that ended without a major breakthrough.
US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he presented North Korean envoy Kim Kye-Gwan with proposals on how Pyongyang could move forward toward scrapping its fledgling nuclear arms program.
He said the North was now considering the proposals, which he described as “ideas that are designed to make rapid progress (toward de-nuclearization).”
Hill, the US pointman on North Korea, was speaking before departing Beijing for discussions with Japanese officials in Tokyo.
He said he was “hopeful” full six-nation talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear program would resume in December, but he reported no major concessions from either side in Beijing this week.
“We hope to hear back from the North Koreans soon,” he added.
Hill said the United States and other nations would not back down on their insistence that North Korea give up its nuclear arms, despite Kim saying this week that it would use its new status as a nuclear power as leverage.
During the Beijing talks Tuesday and Wednesday, Hill held several meetings with Kim and China's chief negotiator to the six-party forum, Wu Dawei.
Envoys from South Korea and Japan also gathered in the Chinese capital amid a renewed drive to jump-start the roundtable negotiations, which also involve Russia.
It follows North Korea's first ever nuclear weapons test on October 9 and its pledge at the end of that month, under heavy international pressure and UN sanctions, to return to talks on dismantling the military program.
Nevertheless a restart date has proved elusive.
The six-party talks, which started in 2003, broke down late last year when North Korea walked out over separate financial sanctions imposed on it by the United States for money laundering and counterfeiting.
Hill said here late Wednesday that North Korea was told it must abide by an agreement made in September last year at the forum that it would give up its nuclear program in return for security guarantees and aid.
“We worked very, very hard to achieve that September plan… We want to get on with implementing it,” Hill said.
He reiterated Thursday that: “The main issue in Beijing was how to get the North Koreans to make some tough decisions to move out of the nuclear business and if they make those tough decisions we will respond appropriately”.
He added “good things” could start to happen for the isolated state if it complied.
Hill said the North Koreans offered no proposals of their own here but took the US plans back to Pyongyang for consideration.
He also appeared to take a firm line against dropping UN sanctions imposed on North Korea, until Pyongyang abandoned its nuclear program.
“I made pretty clear that all these issues, the sanctions, are all related to their nuclear programs and that the best way to get out of sanctions is to get out of nuclear programs,” he said.
However, a US State Department spokesman late Wednesday would not rule out eventually suspending sanctions when the full talks restart, saying that, “If circumstances change, then we'll see what happens.”
While holding out hope of a December resumption to the talks, Hill said the most important thing was carefully preparing the groundwork for success.
However, he also said urgent progress must be made.
“We think it is important to get going as soon as possible. We agreed on that with the Chinese and in fact with the DPRK (North Korea) as well.
“We've lost a year. The decision to fire off missiles and to test a nuclear device was a very clear setback for the process, so we need to get moving quickly.”
Hill was to return to Washington after his Tokyo stop.
