Us envoy in china for talks on nkorea nuclear deal

A US embassy spokesman says US envoy Christopher Hill held talks today with his Chinese counterpart amid stepped up efforts to salvage a crumbling North Korean nuclear disarmament deal.

He says Hill briefed top nuclear negotiator Wu Dawei on the outcome of his discussions this week with North Korean officials on the faltering deal to halt the communist state’s nuclear ambitions.

The US diplomat Friday described as "very substantive" the talks during his visit to Pyongyang, but gave no further details, saying he
must first brief other parties to the six-nation agreement.

A dispute over inspections of the North’s nuclear facilities threatens to wreck last year’s agreement under which the North shut down its nuclear programme in return for fuel aid and its removal from a US terrorism blacklist.

The North now threatens an imminent restart of its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, an issue which Hill called a "great concern

The State Department said Friday In an indication of the challenges facing Hill and the other envoys, the North was still moving to restart the plant despite the envoy’s Pyongyang visit.

The North announced last month it had halted work in protest at Washington’s refusal to drop it from the US blacklist of countries supporting terrorism, as promised under the deal.

SAPA-AFP