North Korea nuclear talks hit impasse

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By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions failed to break an impasse over rules for probing its atomic activities, negotiators said on Wednesday, offering dim prospects of a breakthrough.

Having coaxed North Korea to partly disable its Yongbyon nuclear complex this year in a disarmament-for-aid deal, envoys from five states have been asking the reclusive fortress state to accept a protocol for checking its nuclear declaration.

Agreement on verification would be a welcome diplomatic trophy for outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush before he gives way to President-elect Barack Obama in January.

But the chief U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill, said there was no sign of agreement with Pyongyang after the third day of the latest negotiations. And he offered little prospect of a breakthrough in the talks, which could extend another day.

"It's not trending in the right direction," Hill said after what he said was a tough day of fruitless haggling over verification. "It's been a very difficult day, indeed a very difficult week ... We have not achieved our goal."

Hill said he had not heard from host country China whether the envoys would gather again on Thursday. Japan's negotiator, Akitaka Saiki, was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying they would. But he too sounded downcast.

"We have not resolved (differences) in views over nuclear verification," he said, according to Kyodo.

The six-party talks, begun in 2003, bring together North and South Korea, host China, the United States, Japan and Russia. They took on fresh urgency after Pyongyang held its first nuclear test explosion in October 2006, but have made fitful progress in curtailing its atomic ambitions.

"North Korea is putting its own conditions on verification, because it hasn't made the fundamental choice to abandon nuclear weapons," said Zhang Liangui, a Chinese expert on the North at the Central Party School, a leading thinktank in Beijing.

"Until that changes, North Korea will always find reasons to stonewall."

NORTH KOREA IN NO RUSH

In the latest talks, North Korea has refused proposals to allow inspectors to take nuclear samples to test its declaration, said South Korea's envoy Kim Sook, Kyodo news agency reported.

Many analysts believe North Korea is in no hurry to make concessions, waiting to test Obama's intentions. A South Korean expert on North Korea said Pyongyang was unlikely to make real concessions on verification any time soon.

"North Korea will never allow sampling in the second-phase process because it is a bargaining chip it wants to hold on to until the last moment of the talks," said Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University.

In a sign of North Korea's combativeness, its official KCNA news agency on Wednesday trumpeted a U.S. military report that called it a nuclear arms state.

Regional powers refuse to officially designate the North as a nuclear power, and South Korea's foreign minister has said the U.S. report was mistaken and will be corrected. But Pyongyang has longed for the prestige that goes with such a designation.

Complicating the talks are sour relations between North and South Korea and a feud between Pyongyang and Tokyo over the kidnapping of Japanese nationals decades ago. The North has said it will not recognise Japan's role in the talks.

There is also mystery over the Communist state's leader, Kim Jong-il. U.S. and South Korean officials have said Kim suffered a stroke in August, raising questions about who was making decisions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

If Kim is "seriously ill and is practically out of power, then the hard-line military would try to slow down the negotiation process and ask for even more," said Koh, the Dongguk University professor.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Yoko Nishikawa in TOKYO and Kim Junghyn in SEOUL; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jerry Norton)

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