TOKYO, Aug 27: US officials rejected a key North Korean demand for a non-aggression pact on Wednesday on the first day of six-nation talks to discuss the North’s nuclear ambitions, Japanese media reported.
Kyodo news agency said that the US delegation rejected Pyongyang’s demand that it sign a non-aggression treaty, saying that North Korea must first abandon the nuclear program it resumed in October.
The two delegations later met on the sidelines of the talks to defuse the crisis, but Russia said neither side showed signs of flexibility.
US envoy James Kelly and the North’s chief negotiator, Kim Yong-Il, huddled for 30 minutes during a break.
North Korean demands that the “enemy and hostile policy towards Pyongyang be scrapped” also went unheeded, the news agency said citing Japanese sources.
US and North Korean officials met Wednesday for 30 minutes on the sidelines of six-nation talks in Beijing, Japanese and South Korean officials said.
“There was a meeting between North Korea and the United States on the sidelines of the talks today,” a Japanese official told reporters as his delegation left the talks venue.
A South Korean official said the meeting took place in the same conference room as the six-way discussions, rather than a private venue.
“US-North Korean bilateral contact lasted 30 minutes. We saw it, we were in the same conference room. We could see it,” a South Korean official said.
Pyongyang had initially insisted on discussing the simmering nuclear standoff only with Washington, but agreed to the multilateral talks on condition that the two countries discussed the issue bilaterally as well.
The six-way talks on the North’s nuclear weapons development opened Wednesday and are scheduled to run until Friday, with China, North and South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia participating.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, who attended the talks, said Pyongyang and Washington set conditions at the start of the crunch discussions that were blocking movement in negotiations.
“So far, they have set out a series of preliminary demands that are blocking the progress of negotiations,” Losyukov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
He said that North Korea “would like to be free of nuclear weapons” but at the same time feels “a threat from the United States.”
ITAR-TASS also reported that North Korea told the meeting it had no nuclear weapons, although this was swiftly denied by both South Korean and Japanese delegates.
“There was no such expression indicating if it has nuclear weapons or not,” Wi Sung-Lac, director general of North American affairs at the South Korean foreign ministry said.
The two sides, however, did have two chances to exchange views one-on-one during the day, first on the sidelines of the multilateral gathering.—AFP