US, North Korea to meet in Geneva this weekend

Washington, Aug 28: US and North Korean officials will meet this weekend to discuss next steps under an agreement calling for North Korea to disclose and disable all its nuclear facilities, the United States said.

US Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill will lead the US delegation to a meeting in Geneva, where he is expected to meet North Korea's lead nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters yesterday.

The secretive Stalinist state, which tested a nuclear device in October, agreed during six-party talks in September 2005 to abandon all its nuclear weapons and programs but progress in carrying out that agreement has been slow.

Under a Feb 13 deal also hammered out by the six the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States Pyongyang pledged to take steps to end its nuclear programs in return for economic and diplomatic incentives.

While North Korea last month shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, analysts believe Pyongyang will be reluctant to carry out the next phase of the accord in which it must make a complete declaration of all its nuclear programs and disable all existing nuclear facilities.

''This will be looking at the next steps in the process and how we can come up with the next set of items for us to take forward as we move into the disablement phase of the six-party talks,'' said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

''I wouldn't look for this meeting to produce specific conclusions,'' he added, saying it was likely to work on recommendations for all six countries to consider.

While the US-North Korea working group is ostensibly to discuss normalization of relations, Casey made clear that North Korea keeping its commitments to give up nuclear weapons was a precondition to the full establishment of diplomatic ties.

''Ultimately, if you successfully implement the September '05 agreement and there is complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, then you have an opportunity for a new kind of relationship between North Korea and the United States,'' Casey told reporters.

''What potential there is for full normalization of relations is hinged on and entirely dependent on that denuclearization part,'' he added.

The United States and North Korea have never had diplomatic relations and fought on opposite sides of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty and hence left the antagonists technically still at war.

Reuters>