The talks, which also involve South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, resumed Thursday in the Chinese capital amid hopes for progress toward implementing a September 2005 agreement, in which Pyongyang committed itself to halting its nuclear activities in return for economic and security incentives.
"The Berlin agreements are interpreted by the sides differently, and now that details are under discussion, it has become especially clear," Alexander Losyukov, a deputy Russian foreign minister who heads the Russian delegation, told journalists Saturday.
At a meeting in Berlin last month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan discussed a U.S. freeze of the reclusive regime's Macao bank account over alleged money laundering and counterfeiting. These sanctions prompted the North to withdraw from the six-party talks in 2005.
Pyongyang, which announced its first nuclear weapon test last October, hinted in the run-up to this week's Beijing talks that it may be willing to suspend operations at its Yongbyon nuclear facility, which helped it stage the test, if the U.S. delivers on an earlier promise to build a light-water reactor in North Korea and to provide it with steady fuel oil supplies pending the facility's construction.
Hill told journalists Saturday that only one problem hinders the resolution of the current stage of the six-party talks. He refused to name it, but said he hopes it will take one or two more days to resolve it.
Losyukov said the Russian delegation does not rule out that the talks' participants will fail to adopt a final statement and the stage of talks will result in adopting a statement by the host country, China. He said there are differences regarding the volume of assistance to be rendered to the DPRK, its form and terms.
The Russian diplomat said that in the future Russia could take part in giving aid to North Korea in exchange for folding its nuclear program; however, this issue has not been raised yet.
China presented a draft plan of initial steps for North Korea's nuclear disarmament on Thursday, when the six-nation nuclear talks resumed in Beijing.
The plan proposes closing and sealing North Korean nuclear facilities, including a five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, and the provision of alternative energy sources and economic aid to the impoverished North by the other parties to the talks.
The plan also envisions setting up five working groups to oversee denuclearization efforts on the Korean Peninsula, energy supplies to North Korea, cooperation in the security sphere in Northeast Asia, and relations between North Korea and the United States and Japan.
