Weary envoys battling at six-party talks to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons programmes decided today to take a three-week break to consult their governments.
North Korea, demanding aid and security guarantees in return for ending the programmes, refused to agree to a joint statement despite multiple drafts put forward during 13 days of talks with South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China.
Chinese chief negotiator Wu Dawei said the Beijing talks would reconvene in the week of August 29th and expressed confidence that an agreement could eventually be reached to end a crisis which has dragged on for nearly three years.
North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan
"I cannot say for sure when we can reach agreement on a joint statement and I cannot say for sure that we will reach agreement after the recess," Mr Wu told a news conference. "But I believe we will reach agreement one day," he said.
"We have already won a very big victory on our Long March. If we can compare our work to climbing a hill, the top of the hill has already been in sight. The purpose of us having this break is to get to the top more smoothly."
After the adjournment, North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan put the onus for the stalemate on the United States. He said he hoped Washington would use the recess to alter its demand that the North give up all its nuclear programmes, insisting again that Pyongyang should be allowed the right to peaceful use.
"We couldn't meet in the middle because we were too far apart," he said. "What we are making is a just demand," he said.
Both the United States and Japan said it was North Korea which was holding up an agreement. "I think we were able to achieve a lot of consensus on some issues, but ultimately we were not able to finish the job and not able to bridge the remaining gap," said US negotiator Christopher Hill.
North Korea announced in February it had built nuclear weapons, saying it had taken the step to provide a deterrent to what it called US hostility. Intelligence experts estimate it has stockpiled enough plutonium for up to nine nuclear weapons.
Washington has demanded Pyongyang completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle all its nuclear programmes before it will make concessions such as security guarantees or energy aid.
In Beijing this time the North declared itself committed to denuclearising the Korean peninsula, apart from peaceful power-generation programmes.
Collapse of the six-way process could prompt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations, a move China opposes for fear the crisis might escalate and lead to instability in the region.
North Korea says any attempt to slap it with UN sanctions would amount to a declaration of war. Washington confronted Pyongyang in late 2002 with evidence it was violating international accords by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment weapons programme in addition to its mothballed plutonium reprocessing endeavours at Yongbyon, near the capital.
The North responded by throwing out UN weapons inspectors, abandoning the NPT, breaking the seals at Yongbyon and restarting the reactor there.