The US and North Korea agreed to keep exchanging views on the
uranium enrichment issue, which would not be a stumbling block to
the new round of six-party talks, a senior US official said at a
press briefing Wednesday.??
"One of the issues we talked about with the North was that of
highly enriched uranium," the official said, referring to bilateral
contact on Tuesday.
Delegates held a plenary session lasting almost three hours
Wednesday at which they clarified their stances and offered views
on how to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
The issue of highly enriched uranium, which can be used to
produce nuclear explosive devices, was also mentioned in a keynote
speech by the US at the fourth round of six-party negotiations
yesterday, he said.
"We obviously have some differences with them about the
sequencing of these issues," he said. "We did not achieve an
agreement with them on that but we did agree to keep on talking
about it."
Also discussed yesterday was the US proposal set forth in June
2004 that required North Korea to give an up-front pledge to
dismantle all its plutonium- and uranium-based weapons programs
before receiving any energy or other assistance.
"The real efforts are to keep the focus on denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula." he said. "We don't think that we will have a
problem defining denuclearization."
(Xinhua News Agency July 28, 2005)