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US envoy extends NKorea stay for nuclear talks

By HYUNGJIN KIM,Associated Press Writer AP - Friday, October 3

SEOUL, South Korea - Washington's top nuclear envoy extended his stay in North Korea and held more talks Thursday in a bid to break an impasse over the communist country's nuclear program, officials said.

U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill went to North Korea on Wednesday to meet with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, at the reclusive nation's invitation, U.S. officials said. He stayed the night, and the two sides were holding more talks Thursday, officials said.

The process of dismantling North Korea's nuclear program has been stalled since the North abandoned a 2007 disarmament-for-aid pact in mid-August, citing Washington's refusal to remove it from a terrorism blacklist. The U.S. maintains that the agreement required North Korea to submit to a thorough verification of its nuclear accounting _ a demand it has rejected.

North Korea's defiance comes amid concern about authoritarian leader Kim Jong Il's health. Kim, 66, has not been seen in public since reportedly suffering a stroke in August.

Hill was expected to propose ways to adjust the sequencing of steps North Korea must take as part of verification, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday in Washington.

A senior U.S. official said earlier that Hill would offer to let North Korea agree to a verification program _ but submit details first to its Chinese allies. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

China in the past has served "as a repository for documents and information" and could do the same with the verification protocol, McCormack said. But he stressed that the North Koreans had to agree to the intrusive steps the United States is demanding.

"The ball is in the North Koreans' court," he said. "They have to reverse their reversal and they have to approve a verification regime."

The U.S. official suggested that if North Korea agreed to a verification plan, Washington would provisionally remove it from the list of terrorism sponsors.

U.S. officials said they were not sure North Korea would agree to the idea or, if it did, whether any proposals it presented to the Chinese would be acceptable to Washington.

After leaving North Korea, Hill is to travel to Seoul to brief his South Korean counterpart, Kim Sook, before flying on to China, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said Thursday. It was unclear exactly when Hill and his team, traveling by car through the Demilitarized Zone, would arrive in South Korea.

The two Koreas, meanwhile, held their first official talks in eight months Thursday inside the DMZ.

The military talks were brief, with North Korea demanding that South Korea stop sending propaganda leaflets critical of its leader.

Otherwise, North Korea threatened to expel South Koreans from two inter-Korean projects in the North: a joint industrial complex and a mountain resort, both key sources of hard currency for the impoverished North and prominent symbols of reconciliation on the divided peninsula.

The two Koreas agreed in 2004 on a no-propaganda accord officially ending decades of fierce rhetorical battles using leaflets, loudspeakers and radio broadcasts. However, some North Korean defectors now living in the South still send large helium-fueled balloons into the North carrying anti-Kim Jong Il leaflets _ and sometimes US$1 bills.

Also Thursday, South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported that North Korea has upgraded facilities at a northeastern missile launch site, possibly to test-fire a long-range missile. North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong-2 missile in 2006 from Musudan-ri, but that test was considered a failure.

The new long-range missile _ with a range of up to 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) _ is an upgraded version that experts believe could reach the U.S.

Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae declined to confirm the report.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

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