“Depending on what we hear back from capitals by tomorrow, I think there will be some further announcements very soon,” Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher R. Hill told reporters after his meeting with his North Korean counterpart in Singapore. “We did as much as we could do,” Mr. Hill said. “We addressed all the issues we needed to address.” Before entering talks with Kim Kye-gwan, the North Korean negotiator, Mr. Hill warned that time was running out as Washington and its allies waited for North Korea to clarify whether it would submit what Mr. Hill called a “complete and correct” accounting of its nuclear weapons activities. Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon.
Christopher R. Hill cites Progress in Korea Nuclear Talks Impasse
Progress Cited in Korea Nuclear Talks Impasse
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: April 9, 2008
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea and the United States made significant progress on Tuesday toward ending an impasse in talks aimed at revealing the full scale of the North’s nuclear weapons programs and dismantling them, top negotiators from both countries said.
“Depending on what we hear back from capitals by tomorrow, I think there will be some further announcements very soon,” Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher R. Hill told reporters after his meeting with his North Korean counterpart in Singapore.
“We did as much as we could do,” Mr. Hill said. “We addressed all the issues we needed to address.”
Before entering talks with Kim Kye-gwan, the North Korean negotiator, Mr. Hill warned that time was running out as Washington and its allies waited for North Korea to clarify whether it would submit what Mr. Hill called a “complete and correct” accounting of its nuclear weapons activities.
Pyongyang’s reluctance to offer such a declaration has delayed six-nation nuclear disarmament talks for more than three months.
“There was a considerable narrowing of differences in view,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying by South Korean reporters in Singapore after his talks with Mr. Hill.
Under a February 2007 agreement, North Korea agreed to give a complete accounting of its nuclear activities by the end of last year. It has said that it fulfilled its commitment last November. But Washington insists that North Korea failed to clarify whether it had pursued a secret uranium-enrichment program in addition to its known weapons program based on plutonium and whether it has provided nuclear technology to countries like Syria.
North Korea has repeatedly denied having a uranium-enrichment program or providing nuclear expertise or materials to Syria. But Mr. Hill has been trying to get North Korea to at least acknowledge such the validity of such suspicions, according to officials in Seoul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the delicacy of the talks.
It remained unclear whether Mr. Hill had succeeded in winning North Korea’s full cooperation in verifying Washington’s suspicions or had settled for vague terminology to keep the talks going.
North Korea has been trying hard to get Washington to remove it from an annual State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Getting off that list would help North Korea tap into international finance resources that could bolster its impoverished economy.
Mr. Hill said he hoped to reconvene the six-nation talks as soon as possible. The talks also include South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.
Tension on the heavily armed Korean peninsula have increased in recent days after North Korea tested short-range missiles and made threats against South Korea.
