Nuclear test means now we can talk, says NKorea

Beijing, Nov 28: North Korea is prepared to return to six-country talks on its nuclear weapons programme at any time now that it has ''completed defensive steps'' with a nuclear test, a senior envoy of the communist state said today.

However, Kim Kye-gwan told reporters on arrival for talks in Beijing that North Korea still had differences to narrow with the United States, which has squeezed Pyongyang's external sources of financing for more than a year.

North Korea agreed to return to six-party talks, which it had boycotted for a year, after its October 9 underground nuclear test triggered international condemnation and U N-backed sanctions.

The six-party talks bring together the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia. Envoys from all six, except Russia, are in Beijing for preparatory discussions.

''Because we have completed defensive steps by nuclear testing, we can go to the six-party talks no matter when they are,'' South Korea's Yonhap news reported Kim as saying.

''We have many issues in dispute (with the United States). We have to narrow them to some extent,'' Kim said.

U S Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill is due to meet his Chinese and South Korean counterparts in Beijing today, a US Embassy spokeswoman said.

A State Department spokesman said yesterday that Hill may meet Kim, but the embassy spokeswoman declined to comment.

Japan's top negotiator, Kenichiro Sasae, is also in Beijing.

Hill told reporters on arrival yesterday that he anticipated the six-party talks ''will get going at some point very soon''.

North Korea agreed to return to the talks after Washington said it was willing to address its concerns about financial restrictions, tightened in September 2005 when U S regulators named a Macau bank as a conduit for illicit North Korean cash from currency counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

U S and South Korean officials have said the new round of talks must make substantive progress on implementing an agreement in principle reached last year or risk losing credibility.

Reuters

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