North Korea prepared to discuss 'first-stage' of nuclear disarmament, envoy says

(AP) North Korea expressed readiness Thursday to discuss initial steps of its nuclear disarmament, raising hopes for the first tangible progress at international talks on Pyongyang's atomic weapons program since they began more than three years ago.

"We are prepared to discuss first-stage measures," the North's nuclear envoy Kim Kye Gwan said on arriving in Beijing for the six-nation negotiations, which began later Thursday when head delegates gathered at a Chinese state guesthouse.

American experts who visited Kim in Pyongyang last week said the North would propose a freeze of its main nuclear reactor and allowing international inspectors in exchange for energy aid and normalizing relations with the U.S.

Kim said Thursday that any moves by North Korea would be determined by the United States' attitude.

"We are going to make a judgment based on whether the United States will give up its hostile policy and come out toward peaceful coexistence," he said, adding that Washington was "well-aware" of what it had to do.

The North has twice boycotted the talks for more than a year, claiming various U.S. policies show Washington's thinly veiled desire to topple the Pyongyang regime.

"I'm not either optimistic or pessimistic because there are still many points of confrontation to resolve," Kim said.

Still, his comments marked a change in the North's position from the last round of talks in December, where Kim refused to even discuss disarmament and demanded the lifting of U.S. financial restrictions against a Macau bank where North Korea held accounts.

China plans to circulate a draft disarmament plan Thursday among delegates that would call for freezing the North's nuclear reactor within a few months in exchange for energy aid, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed "high-level source" familiar with the talks.

Earlier Thursday, the main U.S. envoy said he sensed "a real desire to have progress" by the North Koreans at the talks.

However, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill denied a Japanese newspaper report that the United States and North Korea had signed a memorandum during bilateral talks last month agreeing that Pyongyang's first steps toward denuclearization and U.S. energy support would begin simultaneously.

Hill said he was hopeful the talks would lead to progress such as working groups to discuss technical issues.

The lack of any on-the-ground results on disarming the North has raised the issue of the credibility of the six-nation talks, which include China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas.

Since 2003, they have produced only a single agreement in September 2005 on principles for the North to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and pledges that Washington won't seek the regime's ouster.

South Korea's envoy said Thursday the negotiations were at an "important crossroads" and needed to move beyond words to actions.

"Joint efforts, wisdom and flexibility from all six countries are badly needed now more than any other time," Chun Yung-woo told reporters.

The latest nuclear standoff with the North was sparked in late 2002 after Washington accused Pyongyang of a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of a 1994 deal between the two countries. North Korea kicked out nuclear inspectors and restarted its main reactor, moves that culminated in the country's first-ever test atomic detonation in October.

Although the U.S. and other key North Korean allies China and Russia backed U.N. sanctions in the wake of the nuclear test, Washington has since engaged in a series of diplomatic overtures that have drawn praise from Pyongyang.

That included Hill's trip to Germany last month to meet the North's Kim, along with separate U.S.-North Korean talks on financial restrictions Washington placed on a Macau bank.

The U.S. accuses Banco Delta Asia of complicity in the Pyongyang regime's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering, and blacklisting the bank has scared off other financial institutions from dealings with the North for fears of losing access to the U.S. market.

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Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed to this report.