ASIA: The six-party talks about talks on North Korea's nuclear programme will continue for a second round but there are few clues as to where they are heading.
Russian and South Korean sources said the talks will end today with a simple statement which all sides can sign.
"There is a mutual understanding that we should not drag our feet on the next round of negotiations and we should carry them out in the next two months," TASS quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov saying at the end of the second day of talks in Beijing.
South Korea's Yonhap agency reported that the next round of talks will probably be in October and is likely to be again hosted by China.
This result is better than many predicted before the talks finally got underway after nearly 10 months when North Korea insisted it would only accept direct bilateral talks with the United States.
Washington stuck to its hardline and has managed to bring North Korea face to face with all the big players. Each had a short bilateral session with the Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Kim Yong Il sent from Pyongyang.
The American delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Mr James Kelly made a point of declaring that there will be no separate formal bilateral meetings with the North Koreans.
While the diplomatic community will be relieved that the North Koreans did not storm out straight away, diplomats expect a long drawn out diplomatic dance before anything emerges but say this is preferable to threats and posturing that could lead to war.
In the past, North Korea has only agreed to take part in such talks in return for hard currency payments or shipments of grain or fertilizer. So far none of the parties made such contributions but the North Koreans are in the middle of tortuous bilateral negotiations with South Korea, Japan as well as the United States over a number of issues, and any of these could go wrong and disrupt the next round.
North Korea, for example, is angling for a large donation in return for setting free the families of Japanese citizens kidnapped during the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the Japanese, forced to train as North Korean spies, have been allowed home and now want their families to join them.
Japan also brought up the nuclear arms issue in its bilateral meeting with North Korea on Thursday afternoon. Many Japanese fear that North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes would primarly be directed at Japan and some politicians have talked about making a pre-emptive strike.
China is doing its best to ride herd over the countries which are chiefly united in trying to find of way of persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and accept promises that its security is guaranteed. Just how any deal could ever be monitored has yet to be broached. "The parties reiterated that denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the common goal of all sides and the nuclear issue should be resolved peacefully through diplomatic means," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said yesterday.