Few signs of progress in nuclear talks

BEIJING -- The top U.S. envoy met again Friday with his North Korean counterpart at nuclear disarmament talks but said differences remained between the sides as negotiations stretched into the longest round since the six-nation process began.

U.S. assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill held a one-on-one meeting Friday morning with North Korean vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan, their fourth such en-counter this week. Hill said the nations were still divided over the issue of when the North will receive aid in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program.

"Still we have a lot of differences that remain," Hill told reporters Friday evening. "I don't want to suggest for a minute that this is going to be easy."

The delegates are meeting again Saturday, where they hope to start drafting a joint document on what they have agreed to so far, a Japanese official said.

on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the ongoing talks.

"There is no tentative draft," the official said. "All delegations will be striving to draft this common document."

Hill declined to speculate on how long the negotiations, ending their fourth day Friday, would run. No end date for this round has been set, a departure from previous rounds that lasted only three days.

The talks that began Tuesday are the fourth since 2003 where the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have come together to press North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.

All six chief delegates met Friday afternoon and agreed to continue the talks Saturday, said Cho Tae-yong, the No. 2 South Korean delegate. The top delegates will "seriously discuss how to push forward this round of talks," Cho said.

Despite the apparent impasse at the talks, he said Friday's meetings "were not lower than my expectation."

"It's too early to pack or draw conclusions," said Cho, head of the Foreign Ministry's task force on the North Korea nuclear issue.

North Korea is insisting the United States remove any nuclear weapons from South Korea as well as its "nuclear umbrella" of security guarantees to its ally, while others say denuclearization means just getting rid of nuclear weapons from North Korea.

The United States denies it has any nuclear weapons in South Korea and refuses to make any concessions until the North is certified as nuclear-free and inspectors can monitor that it stays that way.

There were no breakthroughs in the earlier talks, and many delegates said they did not expect any in this round, which convened after a 13-month hiatus during which the North refused to attend, citing "hostile" U.S. policies. Most parties have said they hope merely to set a date for a fifth session.

The increased contacts at this round between North Korea and the United States -- which remain technically at war with some 32,500 U.S. troops based in South Korea -- have raised hopes for progress in the standoff.

Despite the meetings with the North Koreans, the United States has ruled out negotiating a bilateral agreement.

"That approach was tried and it failed," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday, referring to a 1994 pact that collapsed after U.S. officials claim North Korea admitted running a secret uranium enrichment program in late 2002.

The North later pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted its main nuclear reactor, spawning the current nuclear crisis.

Pyongyang also claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons.

That claim has not been verified, but U.S. intelligence and other estimates say the North has as many as six atomic bombs.