Fingers crossed, no handshake yet, for North Korea

BEIJING, Feb 8 (Reuters) Six-party negotiations on winding up pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme resume today, with hopes raised for progress on at least the first steps after milestone talks between US and North Korean envoys last month.

Envoys from the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China gathered in a secluded compound in western Beijing, aiming to ease the tensions that drove communist North Korea to carry out its first nuclear test four months ago.

''So far the denuclearisation of North Korea has been mostly talk versus talk. Now it's time to enter the stage of actions versus actions,'' South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo told reporters.

US negotiator Christopher Hill said the session would grapple with the specifics of nudging forward a 2005 statement offering North Korea economic and security concessions in return for abandoning nuclear weapons capabilities.

''I don't want to tell you what aspects of the September '05 agreement we're trying to get implemented, except to say that when we do get a set of actions -- if we do -- it will be widely seen as a very solid, positive step toward implementation,'' Hill told reporters.

North Korean chief negotiator Kim Kye-kwan, who held unprecedented meetings with Hill in Berlin in January, told China's official Xinhua news agency before leaving Pyongyang that he did not ''expect too much'' from the talks.

''We are prepared to discuss the initial steps, but the judgment (for the talks) should be based on whether the United States will come forward and abandon its hostile policy against us and co-exist peacefully,'' Kim said on arrival in Beijing.

Participants have dismissed hopes of an immediate settlement of the long-burning stand-off at this round of their stop-start talks, first convened in the Chinese capital in August 2003.

Hill and Washington officials flatly denied a report in Japan's Asahi Shimbun that North Korea and the United States had signed a memorandum in Berlin under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for aid.

But Pyongyang has said ''a certain agreement'' was reached in Berlin, and a diplomatic source in China said the Asahi report was correct, predicting that the latest talks could lead to the establishment of working groups to thrash out differences over financial, political and energy issues.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS Caught between long-standing but brittle relations with its communist neighbour and hopes for smooth ties with Washington, China has staked a lot on the success of the six-way process.

An official Chinese newspaper said today that even limited progress would be welcome.

''People have reason to have expectations and optimism about these six-party talks,'' said a commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily. ''If the talks produce a breakthrough, even just a small step forward, that will be welcome news.'' China has set no timetable for the latest session, but chief negotiator Wu Dawei said they might last three or four days.

The talks are likely to focus on coaxing Pyongyang to first freeze its Yongbyon nuclear plant, which produces plutonium that can be used in weapons. In return, the energy-famished North may receive assurances of electricity and fuel from its neighbours.

Hopes that such a deal would be sealed at the previous session in December slipped away after North Korea focused on its objections to a US financial crackdown and it emerged that its envoy, Kim, lacked authority to negotiate on other issues.

Hill said he was more confident that this time Kim had the leeway to strike a deal. ''That was a point of our discussion in Berlin, and I have every reason to believe that he will.'' REUTERS MS VC1340