US and Japanese envoys to six-country talks on ending North Korea's nuclear arms programmes expressed hope today that the next round could make progress, after Washington and Pyongyang had meetings in Berlin.
"I would say those meetings in Berlin were indeed useful. They were very concrete. We discussed some of the specific issues we would need to negotiate in the six-party talks," US envoy Christopher Hill told reporters after meeting his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae.
"We hope that this time we can make some real progress," Mr Hill added. "We are committed to trying to make the six-party process work and achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula."
No date has been set for the next round of talks among the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia, which began in 2003 and are aimed at persuading impoverished Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear arms development.
The last round of six-party talks, in December - just two months after a defiant nuclear test by the North triggered UN sanctions - ended inconclusively.
Hill told reporters in Tokyo that he and the North's top six-party envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, had agreed in their Berlin meetings to resume the six-way discussions soon. "We agreed on the need to get going with the next round," he said. China, which hosts the talks, was expected to decide on a date for the resumption after consulting other participants in the multilateral forum, Mr Hill said.
Hill and South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said in Seoul yesterday that they hoped the next round of talks would start before the February 18th Lunar New Year. "