North Korea, US, China seek early six-party talks

BEIJING, Nov 30 (Reuters) North Korea, the United States and host China agreed after two days of meetings to push for an early resumption of stalled six-party talks on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear program, but no date was set.

The three sides also agreed to try to achieve positive progress during the informal discussions in Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its Web site (www.fmprc.gov.cn).

''Through multiple rounds of trilateral and bilateral talks, the three sides exchanged views on pushing forward the process of the six-party talks and boosted mutual understanding in a candid and in-depth manner,'' it said without giving further details, yesterday.

North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei were not expected to hold a third day of informal talks on Thursday, said a US official in Washington who asked not to be identified.

Separately, the State Department said Hill also met South Korea's chief negotiator, Chun Yung-woo, in Beijing and planned to stop in Tokyo for talks with Japanese officials before returning to Washington today.

Another US official was relatively upbeat about the talks between Kim and Hill, who has said he hopes fresh six-party talks can be held in December.

''They had a good conversation,'' said the US official, who spoke to reporters in Washington on condition he not be identified.

I think he (Hill) is very comfortable that we are making progress.'' South Korea's Yonhap news agency said North Korea wanted sanctions dropped and the United States to free its overseas bank accounts as preconditions for dismantling its nuclear programs.

LIKELY STICKING POINT Kim made the demands in meetings in Beijing on Tuesday with representatives of other countries in the six-party talks, Yonhap quoted an unidentified source in Beijing as saying.

The reported terms, if true, could prove a sticking point in negotiations.

North Korea agreed to return to the talks -- which involve South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- after its first nuclear test last month triggered UN-backed sanctions.

US officials have said they want North Korea, without condition, to stand by last year's agreement in which it said it was committed ''to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.'' In return, the other nations held out economic, political and security incentives.

Pyongyang agreed to return to the talks after Washington said it was willing to address the impoverished state's concerns about financial curbs, tightened in 2005 when US regulators named Macau's Banco Delta Asia as a conduit for illicit North Korean cash from currency counterfeiting and drug trafficking.

But the North has also said it would be unthinkable for it to resume talks until Washington ended the financial restrictions.

''Kim called on the US at a Tuesday meeting to reopen its frozen accounts at Banco Delta Asia, a lifting of the UN resolution against the North and the end of individual sanctions as preconditions for its dismantling its nuclear weapons,'' Yonhap quoted the source as saying.

US Gen B B Bell, the head of US forces in South Korea, said yesterday the North was building nuclear weapons for political blackmail.

''I'm not worried about their nukes militarily,'' Bell said.

''I see this as a political instrument much more so than I see it as a military instrument.

REUTERS SBA BST0609