North Korea wrangling rolls on with no deadline

BEIJING, July 20 (Reuters) Grinding talks to end North Korea's nuclear arms ambitions will shift to technical wrangling over disarmament steps, envoys said today as they prepared to endorse a broad plan lacking a deadline.

Chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said he believed North Korea could still complete the second phase of a February disarmament pact by the end of 2007.

That second stage demands the North ''disable'' its Yongbyon nuclear complex and give a full declaration of atomic arms activities in return for continued aid.

At the six-party talks in Beijing, Hill had pushed for a December finish for the tasks. But North Korea would not accept a deadline yet and host China decided the idea was not workable.

Now contention will shift to expert groups dealing with energy aid, disarmament technicalities and Pyongyang's stormy relations with the United States and Japan.

''Ultimately we decided not to put in deadlines yet,'' Hill said on Friday. ''We'll put in deadlines when we have the working groups and we know precisely what we are talking about.'' The working groups will meet in coming weeks to try to choreograph a complex dance of disarmament and aid. Senior negotiators will also meet, possibly in late August, to firm up the disarmament steps and they might also agree on a deadline.

''IMPOSSIBLE TO BE SATISFIED'' Even as the negotiators wrapped up their three days of talks, there were signs of the friction that could easily disrupt or even derail further agreement.

Asked about North Korea's response, Japan's chief negotiator, Kenichiro Sasae, told reporters: ''It's impossible to be satisfied with the other party's attitude.'' North Korea's official KCNA news agency warned Japan yesterday not to use the issue of the abduction by Pyongyang of Japanese citizens -- 13 of whom the North has admitted kidnapping -- as an obstacle to the talks.

''If Japan is allowed to pursue such design, the nuclear issue on the peninsula will remain unsettled for an indefinite period like the abduction issue, an issue of bringing the dead to life,'' it quoted a foreign ministry memorandum as saying.

North Korea's warning came just hours after the top envoys from the two countries held rare one-to-one talks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says North Korea has shut five main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, completing the first stage of a deal reached in February.

The facilities include a reactor and an atomic fuel reprocessing plant that can extract the plutonium Pyongyang used for its first nuclear test blast last October.

The talks have brought together North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China since 2003. Pyongyang quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty after throwing out UN nuclear inspectors in late 2002.

Progress eluded delegates until February when North Korea agreed to close Yongbyon in return for an initial 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, which began moving there from South Korea last week.

Under phase two of that agreement, the North will get an additional 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil in return for disabling its atomic facilities and coming clean on its nuclear secrets.

Hill said North Korea had an incentive to move forward, with talk about other forms of aid and improving oil storage capacity in North Korea.

''My opinion remains the same -- that all of this is quite doable by the end of the year,'' he said, referring to the second stage of the deal. ''Further fuel oil is contingent on further denuclearisation.'' Accumulated distrust remained an obstacle, said Jon Wolfsthal, an expert on the dispute at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

''Neither the United States nor North Korea is really confident yet that the other country has fundamentally changed its stance,'' he said. ''Neither wants to move too far ahead while still unsure of the other's motives.'' REUTERS AM DS1100