US envoy disappointed over six-party North Korea talks
By Wan Ming,WNS Beijing Correspondent
BEIJING - The chief US envoy to six-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons on Saturday described the negotiations as "a little disappointing", after they ended at an impasse. Christopher Hill, speaking to reporters at his Beijing hotel before heading to the airport, paused before responding to a request to describe the week-long talks, the first since Pyongyang boycotted the forum 13 months ago. He eventually replied: "Long, a lot of hard work, a little disappointing - I must be honest with you, because we wanted to make real progress. "So we are going to talk about it next week in Washington, take a little rest and figure out what we do next."
The talks wrapped up on Friday after five days of meetings with no progress made and no date set for another round. The United States and North Korea blamed each other for the deadlock. The negotiations snagged on North Korea's refusal to engage in substantive discussions until Washington lifted financial sanctions imposed last year which have left millions of dollars of North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank. North Korea's chief negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan blamed a "hostile" US policy toward Pyongyang for the failure of the talks, while Hill said the reclusive state had not given Kim the proper authority to negotiate.
The six nations - China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia - had resumed the intermittent, three-year-old forum this week hoping to make real progress toward the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But following its first-ever atomic test on October 9, an emboldened North Korea unveiled a long list of demands at the opening of the talks, effectively scuppering any chance of real progress. When asked if the talks would soon reconvene, Hill said: "We are going to talk about what we need to do, and what the problems are. "I hope the DPRK (North Korean) delegation goes back to Pyongyang and I hope they will have some conversations with Pyongyang."
posted by wnsworld @ 2:19 PM
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