Summit spurs hope for continued talks

U.S. officials played down a meeting of the American and North Korean delegates.
BEIJING (AP) -- Diplomats from six countries meeting to defuse months of tension over North Korea's nuclear program have reached "a consensus" to hold more such talks, a South Korean official said today.
The current round of talks is scheduled to end Friday after three days. The United States, North and South Korea, Russia, Japan and China are trying to balance U.S. demands for an end to North Korea's nuclear program and the communist nation's insistence on a nonaggression treaty with Washington and humanitarian aid.
"There is a consensus that the process of six-party talks should continue and is useful," said Wie Sung-rak, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's North American Affairs Bureau.
Asked to verify a Russian press report that all six would meet again within two months, he said: "It's possible, but you have to wait until tomorrow morning."
Russian Alexander Losyukov, the deputy foreign minister and the head of Russia's delegation, earlier had said the six reached a "common understanding" to meet again within the next two months, probably in Beijing, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Informal meeting
The United States said it would hold no formal one-on-one talks with North Korea at the three-day summit, and the Americans played down the importance of an informal meeting Wednesday between the top U.S. and North Korean envoys on the sidelines of the talks.
That half-hour meeting between Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il ended four months of official silence between the two nations.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing said, "There will not be any separate formal bilateral meetings with the North Koreans." The official spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
The informal direct contact between U.S. and North Korean officials suggests both sides want a solution, though overcoming their deep philosophical and political differences will be a formidable task.
Both sides would benefit if a sturdy channel of communication were re-established -- even if it didn't lead to an immediate resolution of the nuclear dispute. Mere agreement this week to keep talking regularly would constitute some degree of success.
Asserting conditions
At a briefing for South Korean journalists, Wie said North Korea had reiterated that it would shut down its program -- conditionally.
"North Korea is expressing its willingness to make itself nuclear-free, although it is making several demands," he said. He wouldn't say what those demands were.
He added that the United States said it "was willing to address the issue of security concerns of North Korea."
The six countries were still working on what kind of joint statement they would issue when the talks end Friday, Wie said.
The delegations broke for the day at midafternoon with little indication of whether progress had been made.
The North's government had long demanded one-on-one talks with the United States but dropped its objections to the multilateral arrangement after Beijing agreed to host it.
Many think North Korea wanted such direct talks to increase its standing in East Asia and to convey its demands directly to the United States. Washington, though, wanted the opposite and said the situation affected the entire region and should be dealt with multilaterally.
The three-day summit came together after months of political maneuvering when China -- political ally of North Korea and economic partner of the United States -- agreed to be the host. The six-party talks are a continuation of discussions from April, when U.S., Chinese and North Korean officials met in Beijing.
Nuclear status
Tensions and hostilities have been escalating since October, when Pyongyang acknowledged -- to Kelly himself -- that it restarted a nuclear program it had supposedly shut down. The United States has demanded that North Korea stop the program immediately, while the impoverished North has refused to budge without guarantees of security and economic aid.
U.S. officials say they think North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons, and experts think it could produce five to six more in a few months.
In a separate meeting after today's talks adjourned, Japan urged North Korea to let the children of five Japanese citizens kidnapped and spirited to North Korea years ago join their parents, who were permitted last year to return to their homeland.
North Korea, however, reiterated its assertion that Japan had broken a promise by not returning the five abductees to Pyongyang, according to a statement by the Japanese government.
The kidnapping of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s by North Korea -- to train its spies to assume false identities -- has stalled efforts by the two countries to set up diplomatic relations and halted Japan's food aid to impoverished North Korea.
Delegates from the North and South also got together after the talks ended Wednesday, meeting for a half-hour, said Shin Bong-kil, spokesman for the South Korean delegation.
The Koreas were divided in 1945 and share a heavily fortified border. The 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.