US envoy looks for light in NKorea nuclear tunnel

Washington, Feb 6: There can be few jobs more trying than talking North Korea into giving up the capability it demonstrated in a nuclear test last October that capped a decades-long quest for the bomb.

The top US negotiator, Christopher Hill, however, has held that job since 2004 and is going back for more this week showing equal amounts of optimism and realism.

''We do believe we have a basis for making progress at this round,'' he told a February 1. briefing at the State Department before heading off for the six-country talks that open in Beijing on Thursday, seven weeks after the last round ended in deadlock.

''But I'm very mindful of the fact that I expected progress in December and it didn't happen in terms of the actual implementation on the ground.'' Hill's dry wit prevailed even during a recent bout of laryngitis, when the suffering diplomat told Reuters: ''I'm sorry I sound like Marlon Brando. I must have caught something''.

Plenty of Patience, Shirts

But Hill is always quick to return to serious business, reminding reporters the United States needs concrete progress this week towards implementing a September 2005 accord under which North Korea agreed to denuclearize in exchange for diplomatic and economic rewards.

At a round of six-party talks in Beijing that dragged on for nearly two weeks in mid-2005, the state of Hill's travel wardrobe became a constant topic at impromptu media briefings.

''Are you running out of shirts?'' Hill was asked during one chat with reporters well into the marathon negotiations.

''I don't know. We didn't want a situation where we had to have a deadline based on any artificial conditions,'' he replied.

Twelve days in, he was asked again how many clean shirts he had left. ''Two. Down to two. So, book your flight,'' Hill said.

Hill, who hails from the US state of Rhode Island but grew up in different places as the son of a US diplomat, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. He served early diplomatic tours in Belgrade, Warsaw, Seoul, and Tirana and was the U.S.

ambassador to Macedonia, Poland and South Korea.

He won acclaim for his role on the US negotiating team in the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian war in 1995.

Hill was deputy to top Balkan negotiator and former UN ambassador Richard C Holbrooke, who described him in a book as ''brilliant, fearless and argumentative''.

Hill won the State Department's Distinguished Service Award for Bosnia, and for his work on the Kosovo crisis he received the Robert S Frasure Award for Peace Negotiations -- named after a colleague who died in a car crash during the Balkan diplomacy.

Hill is also well known for invoking his love of the Boston Red Sox baseball team while discussing diplomacy.

''I know it's confusing to some people that I could spend six hours talking about anything -- except for the Red Sox -- but it's useful to go over these things,'' he said of recent protracted talks in Berlin with his North Korean counterpart.

Reuters