North Korea's excessive demand for energy resources in return for 'initial steps' towards dismantling its nuclear programme has stalled the six-party talks on the fourth day.
BEIJING: North Korea's excessive demand for energy resources in return for taking the 'initial steps' towards dismantling its nuclear programme has effectively stalled the six-party talks on the fourth day on Sunday.
With huge difference remaining, especially between North Korea and the US, diplomats say the discussions could drag on, raising a possibility that the latest round of talks could go into recess soon for the third time since it started in November 2005.
Negotiators vented increasing frustration at what they believed excessive North Korean demand for energy aid in exchange for renouncing its nuclear programmes.
Japan's chief delegate Kenichiro Sasae confirmed that the North's drastically upped compensation demand is a single last remaining hurdle to this round of talks which began on Thursday.
"The issue is energy aid, rather than economic assistance," Sasae said.
"The problem is that North Korea has excessive expectations about this, and unless it reconsiders this issue, an agreement will be difficult," he reports said.
North Korea says that the extra energy demand, believed to be 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil, is to directly cover the energy losses that would be caused due to suspending the graphite-moderate nuclear reactor in the country's Yongbyon complex.
The demand is in addition to the two million tonnes of fuel oil per year which Pyongyang has demanded in return for implementing the preliminary steps and two million kilowatts of electricity previously pledged by South Korea, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.
Energy aid for North Korea has become the new sticking point in the ongoing six-party talks which resumed after a 48-day break here with envoys from North Korea, South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia meeting separately and together to find a lasting solution to the vexed issue.
North Korea has expressed readiness to accept taking initial steps toward abandoning its nuclear programmes while demanding that the content and scale of aid it will receive in return should be included in a joint statement at the six-party talks.
Earlier, chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said he had a bilateral meeting with the top North Korean negotiator, Kim Kye-Gwan.
"I have met with Kim before I came here...he said he had some ideas... Kim said he will think about them and, maybe, get back to the Chinese side again," Hill told reporters.
"There are some ideas they (North Korea) are going to think about and respond to. So I think we will have ideas when we have a delegation meeting later this afternoon," Hill said.
A draft statement prepared by China reportedly requires that North Korea carry out initial denuclearisation steps within two months and for the five other countries to begin rewarding Pyongyang with energy resources within that same time frame.
The current session of the six-party talks is the first in 2007. A previous five-day round in December 2006 ended in a stalemate after North Korea insisted that the US must lift an economic sanction on the country for its alleged currency counterfeiting and money laundering.
Efforts to convince North Korea to renounce nuclear arms have assumed new urgency since it carried out the first nuclear test in October, prompting UN sanctions endorsed by even China, the close ally of Pyongyang.
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