Officials from six nations held a seventh day of talks on Monday, after China presented a second draft joint statement of principles on ending North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme.
United States negotiators held more bilateral talks with North Korea and plan to continue talks on Tuesday, a US official said.
”They did meet the North Koreans. They were working on the draft today,” the official said.
China’s foreign ministry said there were ”frequent shuttle contacts for in-depth discussions” on Monday on the draft statement between the six delegations from the US, North Korea, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.
Another meeting of deputy delegation heads, who are trying to agree on the wording of a joint statement, is scheduled for Tuesday, the ministry said.
”They are continuing negotiations over language,” a Japanese official said.
Japan still wants the issue of citizens abducted to North Korea to be part of an overall solution to the stand-off over Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons programme, the official said.
”Our position is that this [abduction] issue should also be settled,” he said. But he declined to say if Japanese negotiators were pushing for the abduction issue to be recorded in the joint statement.
The deputy delegation heads met for three-and-a-half hours on Monday afternoon, the government’s official Xinhua news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying.
The Japanese official said the deputies met for four-and-a-half hours on Sunday as they tried in vain to reach consensus on the first draft document.
US chief negotiator Christopher Hill said China presented the new draft overnight, but he warned on Sunday that getting agreement on the document would be a ”lengthy, difficult process”.
The draft document has generally been called a ”statement of principles” for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, but Xinhua on Sunday said it would be a ”joint document to sum up the developments”.
US and North Korean officials have been trying to bridge major differences over the timing and content of steps to end North Korea’s nuclear programme.
South Korean delegation head Song Min Soon on Sunday said the joint statement is likely to refer to a 1992 declaration in which the two Koreas pledged not to test, produce, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.
Xinhua quoted Song as saying the 1992 declaration could be used in a ”flexible manner” to settle the current nuclear issue.
North Korea is believed to want the document to provide security and energy guarantees, promote economic cooperation and commit Washington and Tokyo to normalising relations with Pyongyang.
The US wants North Korea to agree to dismantle its plutonium and uranium weapons programmes before it begins to receive international energy assistance and security guarantees.
But US officials said North Korea continued to deny running a uranium programme during meetings earlier this week.
North Korea apparently also wants the US to act first. — Sapa-DPA