Draft agreement offered in North Korea talks

Talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program resumed here Thursday, with China distributing a draft agreement that U.S. and South Korean envoys described today as offering a good start for discussions.

South Korean negotiator Chun Yung-woo and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill declined to give any details of the draft.

Japan’s Kyodo News agency reported today that the draft called for communist North Korea to suspend operations at its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon within two months in exchange for energy aid.

The agreement was drawn up after the first day of six-nation talks among the two Koreas, Japan, the United States, Russia and China.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said China had proposed five working groups on North Korea’s denuclearization, including one on normalizing ties between Pyongyang and Washington.

Yonhap said the one-page draft included timelines for the North’s freezing of its key nuclear facilities, including its only operational 5-megawatt reactor, and for the other parties to supply aid and security guarantees.

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 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.

Hill cautioned that much work remained.

“We have to sit down and make sure we agree on every word, every comma. It will be a long day,” he said.

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

But 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. Pyongyang and Washington held separate talks in Beijing in late January on the financial issue, although it has yet to be resolved.