US and North Korea to begin nuclear talks in China

3.00pm

BEIJING - US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly prepared for today with North Korea aimed at resolving the standoff over Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons program over breakfast with Chinese officials.

But with North Korean negotiator Li Gun not considered senior enough to cut deals, there was little expectation of an immediate breakthrough in the first formal face-off between Washington and Pyongyang since the crisis began last October.

Kelly made no comment as he left his Beijing hotel for the Diaoyutai State Guest House, the walled garden compound where China receives visiting dignitaries.

China was to host a working breakfast with the US delegation after which multilateral talks would begin, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

"The purpose of these talks is to get started, for us to be able to lay out the means for a verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea's nuclear program," Boucher said. "I'm sure the North Koreans will lay out their positions as well."

Three days of closed-door meetings were aimed at letting the United States and North Korea sound out each other's positions, and China would mainly sit in as a facilitator, not a mediator, diplomats said.

The Korean peninsula remains the Cold War's last flashpoint and reclusive North Korea fears it could be the next target after the quick US military campaign in Iraq.

President Bush, who has bracketed North Korea in an "axis of evil" with pre-war Iraq and Iran, told magazine reporters on Tuesday he has no current plans for another war.

Kelly met Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, one of China's point men on North Korean affairs, late on Tuesday. Boucher called the meeting to discuss the talks "productive."

Washington wants the North Koreans to close down their nuclear program to end the crisis which has festered since October. The North wants assurances the United States will not attack it.

The wide gulf between the two was unlikely to be bridged this week, diplomats said.

"Apart from agreeing on the continuation of dialogue, I am not expecting much to come out of this," said an Asian diplomat in Beijing. "They are not going to be seeing eye to eye on many things."

Both sides struck tough public postures in the run-up to the talks.

The commander of US forces in South Korea said on Tuesday the Communist North posed many threats to global stability with its active nuclear weapons program, proliferation of missile technology, and a massive army aimed at South Korea.

Pyongyang railed against "US imperialists," although analysts it would be under pressure to keep the lines of communication open and would take a more measured tone at the negotiating table.

China, which invited the two sides, would play "honest broker" to keep the talks moving, the diplomat said. One analyst said China would keep to the sidelines as much as possible.

However, a breakthrough offer from the North Korean side seemed unlikely. Li would be unable to offer major concessions or cut deals due to his relatively junior rank and would be limited to discussing procedural matters, a Western diplomat said.

"He will have very, very little negotiating room," he said. "He's a deputy director. They didn't even send a director.

North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, threw the talks into doubt last week with foreign ministry statement saying Pyongyang was "successfully reprocessing" nuclear fuel rods. It later corrected what analysts said was a translation error to say it was on the verge of reprocessing the rods, a precursor to making bombs.

The nuclear standoff began in October, when the US said the North admitted it had an active covert program to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear arms, beside a plutonium program frozen under a 1994 pact with the United States.

This time, the US goal is to eliminate, rather than merely freeze, those programs - a tall order, experts say.

- REUTERS