NORTH KOREA:North Korea has agreed to resume six-country talks aimed at winding up its nuclear arms programme soon, the US representative at the negotiations said yesterday.
"There was an agreement that we felt we can make progress and we should go ahead and try to schedule a six-party session," Christopher Hill told reporters in Seoul, commenting on meetings he held earlier this week with the communist state's negotiator.
North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test last October, said only that it had reached a "certain agreement" with the United States at the talks in Berlin, but it praised the direct dialogue between the enemies.
In a statement, Pyongyang's foreign ministry said that the talks took place from January 16th-18th "in a positive and sincere atmosphere and a certain agreement was reached there".
"We paid attention to the direct dialogue held by the DPRK [ North Korea] and the US in a bid to settle knotty problems in resolving the nuclear issue," the official KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman as saying.
Mr Hill and the North's Kim Kye-gwan had given no sign of a breakthrough after their discussions in the German capital.
In Washington, Tom Casey of the state department said he was not sure what North Korea meant by "certain agreement". "You will have to ask them," he said.
Mr Hill said after briefing South Korean officials yesterday that he and Mr Kim had agreed they were ready to be back at the six-way talks soon and make progress. North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US participate in the talks, which began in 2003.
The last round of six-party talks, in December - which took place just two months after the North conducted its first nuclear test, triggering UN sanctions - ended inconclusively.
Mr Hill and South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said they hoped the next round of the talks would start before the February 18th lunar new year. Mr Hill travels to Tokyo and Beijing this weekend. - (Reuters)