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NKorea nuke talks focus on verifying past activity
By CARA ANNA,Associated Press Writer AP - 2 hours 18 minutes ago
BEIJING - The latest round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program will focus on the difficult task of verifying the country's accounting of its past nuclear activities, envoys said Monday.
North Korea _ which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006 _ agreed last year to disable its main reactor in exchange for aid. However, Pyongyang recently said it would not allow inspectors to take samples from the nuclear complex to verify its past activities.
The six countries involved in the negotiations held an hour-long meeting Monday afternoon, discussing related topics such as fuel oil aid to North Korea and a schedule for disabling its nuclear facilities.
"There were no real contentious issues there," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill told reporters.
"It's pretty clear what we're going to be focusing on in the next couple of days is verification," he said, adding that the North Koreans did not make any comments on that process during Monday's talks.
Negotiators from the six countries _ which also include host China, South Korea, Japan and Russia _ have downplayed expectations and said they expect the process to be difficult.
"I cannot deny that there is a very large gap between the positions of North Korea and the other parties in the six-party talks regarding verification," Japanese nuclear negotiator Akitaka Saiki said.
China, which met separately with each of the other five delegations Monday, was expected to circulate a draft agreement on the process on Tuesday, envoys said.
"I asked China to play an active role to produce (the verification) protocol at a difficult time," South Korea's Kim Sook said. Chinese envoy Wu Dawei said his country "will do what it should do."
A consensus was reached among the six parties to ship all the promised economic aid to North Korea _ 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid _ by the end of March, Kim said, without elaborating.
The economic aid has been a sticking point in the negotiations. Japan has refused to send any aid, saying Pyongyang must first address the kidnappings of more than a dozen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s.
North Korea responded by vowing to ignore Japan at the latest talks. Its envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, said Monday that the parties should debate whether Japan was qualified to take part in the disarmament talks, the Kyodo news agency reported, citing an unnamed Japanese official.
North Korea has issued similar warnings in the past, but Tokyo has continued to attend the negotiations that began in 2003.
In bilateral talks with South Korea, Pyongyang agreed to export its unused fuel rods to other countries. Asked whether South Korea will buy the fuel rods, Kim said no decision had been made yet.
Seoul has said in the past it would consider buying the North's fuel rods if they can be adapted to work in South Korea's power-generating nuclear reactors.
___
Associated Press writer Kwang-Tae Kim contributed to this report.
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