US envoy expects progress in North Korea nuclear talks

The chief US negotiator with North Korea said Saturday he expects progress in next week's multinational talks on scrapping its nuclear weapons. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill urged the communist state, which staged its first nuclear test last October, to make "some real changes on the ground" towards disarmament.
Hill, speaking on arrival in South Korea for preparatory talks before the December 8 six-party meeting in Beijing, did not elaborate. Experts believe the two sides have discussed a freeze of activities at the North's plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear reactor in return for economic benefits.
The six-party talks have dragged on since 2003 but there are high hopes of progress after the US and the North held rare bilateral negotiations in Berlin last month.
The two sides also held talks this week aimed at settling a dispute over US financial sanctions which had blocked progress on the nuclear issue. No agreement was reached but Hill called them "very useful." Hill is scheduled to meet his South Korean counterpart Chun Yong-Woo and Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon Sunday to co-ordinate strategy before the six-nation talks - grouping the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States - resume.
"Obviously our hope is to begin to implement the September agreement," he told reporters in reference to a September 2005 deal under which the North agreed to scrap its nuclear weapons in exchange for energy and economic aid, security guarantees and diplomatic benefits. "We had hoped to do that in December (at the last six-party round) and I think we do have some reason to believe we can make some progress on that. But I will know better about a week from now."
Asked what would constitute progress, Hill said: "I would define it as beginning the implementation of the September 2005 agreement, that is to begin to see in a reasonable set amount of time some changes actually take place on the ground."
Asked if a nuclear freeze would qualify as progress, he said he would not discuss specific elements of discussions "but I think we need to see some real changes on the ground."
The September 2005 deal went nowhere. North Korea boycotted the six-party forum two months later, in protest at the imposition of US financial sanctions on a Macau bank accused of handling counterfeit money for Pyongyang.