The United States and North Korea held a “good” and “businesslike” bilateral meeting Tuesday, but it will still take a long time for issues to be settled between the two rivals, the top US negotiator said.
Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia-Pacific affairs, told reporters that the two sides had “good discussions” on the first day of six-party talks to address the North’s nuclear weapons programmes.
“Everyone had the opportunity to put their issues on the table, … but this may take a little longer than you would want and I want,” he said.
“It was very businesslike, we avoided any rhetoric. It was an effort to get all the issues on the table, to make sure we know what is important to each of us, so it was positive in that sense.”
Hill said the two sides also discussed the US proposal that was put forward last June, which required North Korea to give an up-front pledge to dismantle all its plutonium and uranium weapons programmes before receiving any energy and other assistance.
North Korea at the time rejected the US offer and instead wanted a step-by-step approach to weaning itself off its nuclear programmes.
“We talked about the June proposal, talked about the sequencing of the proposal, the importance they attach to the sequencing where they don’t want to have to have obligations ahead of other people’s obligations,” he said.
But he declined to elaborate further on the discussion or the response he received from the Stalinist state’s negotiators.
“I don’t want to characterise their response, except that obviously there is this concern about the sequencing of issues, I don’t want to call it positive or negative.”
Hill did not mention how long the meeting lasted, but a South Korean official said the meeting lasted “long hours.”
On Monday the US met with the North to work out procedures on the negotiations concerning the abandonment of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programmes.
