N. Korea's Refusal Stalls Six-Nation Talks

BEIJING - North Korea's refusal to abandon its demand for a civilian nuclear reactor stalled six-nation disarmament talks Friday, with the Chinese hosts acknowledging they could not promise a breakthrough before delegations headed home for the weekend.

The talks, which resumed Tuesday after a five-week recess, have snagged on Pyongyang's insistence that it be given a light-water nuclear reactor — a technology arms-control experts say can produce material for weapons — before it dismantles its existing programs.

"The gap between the parties remains significant," China's chief delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, told reporters. He said negotiators would consult their capitals and could meet again next week.

The United States flatly rejects the reactor demand. Washington's envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has said the North forfeited any right to a nuclear energy program by secretly pursuing weapons for two decades.

"They've had 50 years of the benefits of nuclear energy, as they put it, and during that time they were making bombs," Hill said this week. "So we're not prepared to give them a light-water reactor."

North Korea's delegation, led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, countered that producing nuclear energy is a sovereign right and that Pyongyang will not disarm without what it calls concrete security guarantees and economic aid.

The impasse is a familiar one. Three earlier rounds of talks among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia ended without agreement, and a February statement in which Pyongyang claimed to possess nuclear weapons deepened the mistrust.

Diplomats said a Chinese-drafted joint statement laying out principles for disarmament — including verification, security assurances and energy aid — remained on the table but that the North had refused to endorse language requiring it to give up all nuclear programs.

South Korea has offered to supply the North with 2 million kilowatts of conventional electricity if it disarms, a proposal Seoul calls a substitute for the reactor. Pyongyang has so far dismissed the offer as insufficient.

"We are not at the point of giving up, but we are at the point of realism," a senior U.S. official said.