North Korea staked out a tough position today on the second day of six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programmes, demanding US concessions as the other five outlined proposals for resolving the crisis.
But with an unusually high level of one-on-one contacts between the North and the United States and a new, open-ended format, the mood at the long-delayed fourth round of talks also including South Korea, Russia, Japan and China remained hopeful.
"During their bilateral contacts with the United States, the North Koreans demanded the United States remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula as part of mutual efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula," a diplomatic source in Beijing told Reuters.
Washington, which keeps more than 30,000 troops in South Korea, says it no longer has such weapons in the country.
Delegates held a plenary session lasting almost three hours today at which they clarified their positions. They followed up with a series of bilateral meetings in the afternoon.
The US and North Korean views remained sharply divergent. A second diplomatic source in Beijing said that North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan had told the session: "If relations between North Korea and the United States are normalised and nuclear threats from the United States are removed, we will abandon our nuclear weapons and nuclear programme."
For his part, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill insisted that Pyongyang first abandon its nuclear weapons programmes in a verifiable way.
At yesterday's opening plenary session, Mr Hill sought to reassure the North, which it had labelled just months ago as an "outpost of tyranny", that Washington considered it a sovereign state which need not fear American attack.
Three previous rounds saw no progress and a stalemate this time might prompt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations and open debate on possible sanctions, which China opposes and North Korea has warned would trigger conflict.
If the talks go well, the rewards could help the impoverished North out of diplomatic isolation and offer much-needed aid.
The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when US officials accused Pyongyang of pursuing a clandestine weapons programme, prompting it to expel nuclear inspectors. Early this year North Korea announced that it had nuclear weapons. It demanded Washington provide aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping them.