Envoys to North Korea nuclear talks object to Chinese draft proposal to disarm Pyongyang

(AP) The U.S. envoy to talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program said Friday that a Chinese draft proposal on initial steps for disarming Pyongyang is encountering resistance, indicating obstacles to an imminent breakthrough.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the draft proposed after the first day of talks Thursday was discussed at a meeting of heads of delegations from the six countries involved.

"Opinions were expressed around the room, sometimes divergent opinions on the Chinese draft," Hill said Friday. "There are some differences of views among the various delegations."

The one-page plan _ presented at meetings where North Korea agreed in principle to take initial steps to disarm _ would grant the communist nation unspecified energy aid for shutting down its main nuclear facilities, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

The U.S. and North Korean envoys held a one-on-one meeting later Friday at a Beijing hotel away from the main negotiating venue to discuss the draft.

North Korea's nuclear envoy said after the meeting that he agreed with Hill on some issues, but added that differences remain unresolved.

"We discussed ways to move the talks forward," Kim Kye Gwan said. "We agreed on some issues, but overall there are still some points of confrontation and we are going to make more efforts to resolve them," Kim said.

Hill said reaching consensus was proving tough.

"This is a difficult time when you're trying to talk about words on a paper and making sure you have the same understanding of the words," Hill said after meeting Kim.

Hill said he was "cautiously optimistic, but I don't want to count chickens before they hatch."

Officials declined to confirm details of the draft, but South Korea's nuclear envoy said it offered a good start for discussion.

"It's good as a basis for negotiations, but I don't want to predict whether there will be smooth negotiations," Chun Yung-woo told reporters ahead of the second day of talks in Beijing. He declined to give any details of what the draft contained.

Hill said earlier Friday that he was anxious for progress in the slow-moving negotiations.

"We've gone 18 months without anything, that is why these negotiations are so important," Hill said.

Any agreement on an initial set of reciprocal moves to implement a September 2005 accord _ in which North Korea pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees _ would set the stage for the first tangible steps in the often-delayed six-nation process.

The 2005 deal, a broad statement of principles that did not outline any concrete steps for dismantling North Korea's nuclear program, was the only agreement since the negotiations began in 2003.

At the last session of the arms negotiations, in the wake of North Korea's Oct. 9 underground nuclear test, the North Koreans refused to even talk about its nuclear programs. Instead, Pyongyang demanded the U.S. lift financial restrictions targeting alleged North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering.

But since then, the U.S. and North Korean nuclear envoys held an unusual one-on-one meeting in Germany last month where differences between the sides were apparently discussed, although no details of any concessions have been made public. Pyongyang and Washington held separate talks in Beijing late January on the financial issue, although it has yet to be resolved.

The six-nation talks _ including China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas _ began in August 2003, but the North has twice boycotted them for more than a year. The latest was over a U.S. decision to blacklist a Macau bank where the North held accounts, saying it was complicit in the regime's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

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Associated Press reporters Hiroko Tabuchi and Burt Herman contributed to this report.