BEIJING: North Korea returned on Thursday to international talks on its nuclear activities after a nine-month break, in what host China hailed as a potential turning point in the disarmament process.
Envoys from the six nations involved in the long-running talks gathered in Beijing in an effort to capitalise on recent progress that saw the North finally hand over a declaration of its atomic activities last month.
The meeting “serves as a turning point to further push the six-party talks to a new stage”, chief Chinese envoy Wu Dawei told his fellow delegates in front of reporters at the start of the discussions.
“Our goals should be to turn the new expectations of the various parties into a new consensus and to turn new aspirations into new momentum.”
However the US and South Korean envoys cautioned there would be no quick, dramatic progress towards the final goal of North Korea completely and permanently giving up the nuclear programmes it has spent decades developing.
The talks — which began in 2003 and involve China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia — had not been held for nine months amid a deadlock over the North’s much anticipated nuclear declaration.
But the United States quickly responded after the North delivered the document by easing some trade sanctions, as agreed to in a landmark six-nation accord in February last year. Also as part of that accord, the United States began the process of taking the nation once described by President George W. Bush as part of an “axis of evil” off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Now the envoys to the multilateral talks have gathered to work out ways to verify that declaration, a potentially tricky process that US envoy Christopher Hill said could take months.
