The heads of the six delegations held two joint meetings
yesterday as they continued to thrash out the draft of a proposed
joint document on the Korean nuclear issue.?
The painstaking efforts, however, made little concrete progress,
as the talks entered a record eighth day and negotiators vowed to
continue talks today.
Working from a proposed draft put forward by China, delegates
from the US, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea have all been
engaged in intense negotiations on the joint document since last
Saturday.
Visiting US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick described
the talks as a "difficult process" yesterday, saying the five
parties are in fairly close agreement on key principles and the key
question is whether Pyongyang is willing to make the strategic
decisions needed for the process to move forward.
Speaking at the gate of his country's embassy in Beijing
yesterday, Pyongyang's chief delegate Kim Kye-gwan told Associated
Press that differences in opinion remained between North Korea and
the US but said the North was looking to narrow the differences as
much as possible.
Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said yesterday the
nuclear disarmament talks may last all week as delegates move on
from discussing the draft joint document to the wording of the
official document itself, reported Kyodo News.
(China Daily August 3, 2005)