2005-09-08

Talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs will resume in Beijing on September 13, China said, despite the main protagonists remaining at loggerheads, AFP reported.

The representatives from the six countries involved in six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program hold hands as the meeting officially begins in Beijing July 26, 2005. [Reuters]

"The second phase of the fourth round of six-party talks will be held in Beijing on September 13," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a briefing, but declined to give an end date.

"The six sides need to jointly make that decision according to the progress of the talks," he said, adding that "the road is complex and full of twists".

"We can't rely on one round to resolve all the issues. But we are not pessimistic as long as the six sides bear in mind the aim of denuclearisation."

The talks between China, the United States, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan were adjourned on August 7 after Washington rejected Pyongyang's demand for its "unconditional right" to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

They were scheduled to resume in the last week of August but North Korea refused to return, citing war games between South Korea and the United States as creating the wrong atmosphere.

Despite the agreement to meet again, few signs have emerged since the fourth round recessed after 13 days of fruitless talks that North Korea or the United States are willing to budge from their entrenched positions.

Pyongyang is insisting that the United States should allow it the right to use civilian nuclear energy in return for disbanding its atomic arms program, which has been rejected by Washington.

North Korea reiterated its position in Tuesday's Rodong Sinmun.

"(North Korea) had built the nuclear power facilities for decades tightening its belts," Rodong said in a commentary.

"It is unimaginable for (North Korea) to dismantle its independent nuclear power industry built with so much effort, yielding to outsiders' pressure, without getting any proposal for compensating for the loss of nuclear energy."

The United States points to Pyongyang's failure to contain such a program to peaceful purposes in the past.

It has also argued that the package being put together by the other nations in the talks includes conventional energy supplies that would replace the energy capacity of light water reactors.

South Korea has already offered to supply its northern neighbour with large supplies of electricity if it renounces nuclear weapons.

The standoff flared in October 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of developing a secret uranium-enrichment program in violation of a 1994 arms control pact.

Pyongyang has denied the US charges but declared in February this year that it had already built nuclear bombs.