N.Korea nuclear deal born as storm in a tea cup

BEIJING, Feb 14 (Reuters) Secretive messengers, threatened walkouts, musings over a traditional Korean cup, and a late night showdown over oil marked the tortuous way to a deal curbing North Korea's nuclear ambitions, according to one insider in the talks.

The plan, promising North Korea fuel aid and diplomatic rewards in return for shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear plant, was signed in Beijing in solemn ceremony after six days of talks.

Behind the scenes, however, forging the agreement entailed fiery clashes and head-scratching over the isolated North's demands, said a senior Washington official close to the talks.

He left no doubt that advancing the nascent plan to scrap Pyongyang's atomic arms ambitions promises more of the same.

''They're pretty tough negotiators. They don't say, 'Oh, no! We really want a deal.' They always leave you with the impression they're ready to walk,'' said the official, who briefed a handful of journalists on condition of anonymity.

The six-party talks have brought together the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia since 2003, seeking a way to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. But the gulf between North Korea and the other countries ran so deep in late December that hopes for a deal seemed faint.

Five days of talks in Beijing in December ended in rancour after North Korea's envoy Kim Kye-gwan refused to talk nuclear disarmament and instead relentlessly attacked US financial restrictions.

FIERY TEMPER Kim can be ''perfectly civil'' but holds a fiery temper, said the US official.

''There are moments when he is upset and, boy, you can tell it.

He kind of turns a darker shade of purple,'' he said of Kim, drawing nods of agreement from his colleagues.

Two months earlier, North Korea exploded its first nuclear device, alarming regional capitals, and with the collapse of the year-end negotiations, prospects for the six-party talks were clouded.

But two nights before Christmas, the US negotiator Christopher Hill sent a subordinate to North Korea's glum concrete-and-tile embassy in central Beijing with an idea -- to meet one-on-one to hash out their differences and look beyond the financial standoff.

Setting aside the Bush administration's previous ban on in-depth bilateral meetings with a communist state the US president called part of an ''axis of evil,'' Hill and Kim met in Berlin and hammered out the makings of an agreement to be formally discussed in Beijing.

But Kim's demands for oil almost caused the talks to unravel and pushed U.S. negotiators close to leaving the six-party talks that resumed last week.

Hill came to Beijing with the idea that North Korea would shut down its Yongbyon nuclear plant and in return a working group of experts would map out an energy package for Pyongyang.

But North Korea wanted something more specific, though its negotiators were not sure exactly what, the U.S. official said.

''Beijing should have been a fairly straightforward exercise, but the problem was that the North Koreans wanted an overall number,'' he said. To make negotiations even more complicated, Kim was not clear about how much oil his country was demanding.

''They're so opaque. They never quite really say what they really need,'' the US official added.

CERAMIC CUP With the talks again teetering near collapse, Hill reached for a homespun symbol to convince North Korea not to be too greedy. Hill, formerly the US ambassador to Seoul, told Kim on Monday that he kept a traditional Korean ceramic cup on his desk.

''The way it works is if you pour it a little too much, if you try to put too much liquid into the cup, it all drains out and you get nothing,'' Hill related to Kim, warning that Pyongyang risked the same fate.

Negotiations sputtered back to life on Monday, with China's negotiator Wu Dawei gesturing to Hill to hold his frayed temper and wait for the North Koreans to show their hand.

Deep in the night, word started coming out that North Korea was ready to sign onto an initial disarmament plan offering it one million tonnes of sludgy fuel oil. In return, the North had to offer deeper disarmament promises than were first discussed.

''We said, 'You want more oil, you gotta do more,'' the US official said.

He was more tight-lipped about how Washington came to agree to wind up its crackdown on North Korean finances, also a key sticking point. ''Basically, we had a political decision,'' he said.

REUTERS kd nd1540