MOSCOW, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow welcomes an agreement between North Korea and the U.S. to resume six-party negotiations soon, an official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
North Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan and Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Hill agreed on resuming the six-party negotiations after their talks in Beijing on Saturday.
The parties agreed to open a fourth round of the six-party negotiations from July 25, 2005, the Central Telegraph Agency of North Korea said.
The six-party negotiations, launched in Beijing in 2003 by Russia, the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China and Japan, were designed to end the North Korean nuclear program but failed to produce any result.
The fourth round scheduled for October 2004 did not take place and Pyongyang announced it could not discuss its nuclear program in the conditions of constant threats from Washington.
In February 2005, North Korean authorities officially announced that the country had its own nuclear arms.
The North Korean central newspaper Nodon Sinmun said July 5 that Pyongyang was not against six-party negotiations.
But the problem was that the U.S. position remained unclear, the North Korean Central Telegraph Against quoted the newspaper as saying.
