Delegates of the US and North Korea began their fourth
one-on-one meeting this morning.??
One-on-one meetings between delegations would prevail on the
fourth day of six-party talks in search of ways to resolve the
Korean nuclear issue, diplomatic sources said Friday.
After their three-hour third meeting yesterday morning, which
was longer than the previous two meetings, the US and North Korean
delegations agreed "to continue consultations," the Chinese
delegation's spokesperson Qin Gang said Thursday afternoon.
Qin also disclosed that the heads of the Japanese and North
Korean delegations might meet at an appropriate time.
The ongoing fourth round of six-party talks was moving toward
the right direction at a "good" atmosphere, said Vice Foreign
Minister Dai Bingguo at a meeting with heads of the six delegations
yesterday.
"All the delegates have had frank, in-depth and pragmatic
discussions on realizing a nuclear weapon-free Korean Peninsula and
setting an overall goal for the six-party talks," Dai said.
An official with the South Korean delegation said Thursday
afternoon that all delegations agreed to strive for substantive
results, including a joint document, in the talks involving China,
the US, Russia, Japan, South and North Korea.
While people were expecting the outcome of the negotiation,
Russian delegation head Alexander Alexeyev told a press briefing
yesterday he would leave Beijing for Moscow on Saturday.
Alexeyev, also Russian deputy foreign minister, said his deputy
would remain in Beijing and he would come back "as soon as it's
necessary."
The fourth round of six-party talks restarted Tuesday in Beijing
after a 13-month-long impasse, and no deadline has been set for the
talks as all sides had expressed their willingness for substantive
results before the resumption of the negotiation.
(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2005)