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The United States will not bargain any more with North Korea over its nuclear weapons drive, the top US envoy said Monday as six-nation talks hung in the balance on a final day of negotiations.
Christopher Hill and his counterparts from Japan and South Korea said the success or failure of the talks in Beijing depended on the final response from North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan.
“I think we have put everything on the table. We offered a way forward on a number of issues,” Hill told reporters here.
“They (North Koreans) just have to make a decision. I don't think we are going to do any more bargaining.”
Hill said Monday would be the final day of talks, which had begun Thursday on an optimistic note with host China presenting a proposal for North Korea to take initial steps toward disarmament in return for economic incentives.
“It is the last day. The Chinese announced this to us and I was the first to second the motion,” Hill said as he and his fellow envoys from China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia prepared to meet again at a state guesthouse one final time.
The draft accord put forward by China outlined measures North Korea could take to begin disarming in return for energy aid and other economic incentives.
While envoys have not given any specifics of the accord, press reports have said it would commit North Korea to closing its five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and other atomic facilities within two months.
But the reclusive Stalinist regime, apparently emboldened by its first-ever nuclear test in October last year, has demanded two million tonnes of fuel oil as part of a package of inducements, Japanese press have reported.
That would be four times as much fuel oil as offered under a now-defunct 1994 disarmament deal.
Chief Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae told reporters on Sunday that the main problem was North Korea's “excessive expectations” for energy aid.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting sources in Beijing, reported that talks had become bogged down over the United States wanting to “disable” rather than just “freeze or shut down” the North's nuclear weapons facilities.
“Our country for its part will make maximum efforts to help bring about an agreement in cooperation with the countries concerned,” Sasae said.
“(But) this will largely depend on how North Korea is going to act. What kind of answer they are going to give.”
South Korean envoy Chun Yung-Woo said: “North Korea knows how much of the corresponding measures we can take (in return) for how far North Korea goes. I expect North Korea to come up with an opinion.”
Hill hinted that the six-party talks — which began in 2003 but have not stopped the North's efforts to become a nuclear power — could be nearing the end of their usefulness if an agreement was not reached in this round.
“I think there is a certain life cycle to these negotiations and I think there is an opportunity here,” he said.
“I think a lot of people have to look and consider the value of this diplomatic track.
“I don't want to predict this is the last chance but I think it is a moment that we have to see whether the DPRK (North Korea) is interested in this opportunity or not.”
A Pyongyang mouthpiece newspaper on the weekend blamed the lack of progress in the current round of talks on the United States not honouring pledges made earlier to give energy incentives and lift financial sanctions on the North.
“(North Korean) delegates participating in the six-party talks are expressing distrust over the US act of betrayal,” the Chosun Shinbo, published for ethnic Koreans in Japan, said in its online edition.
