Nuclear Envoy Briefs Rice on NK Talks

WASHINGTON _ U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was briefed on nuclear negotiations with North Korea in Geneva, while working-level officials stayed behind in case further talks would be needed, the State Department said Friday.

"I do know that Chris (Hill) has spoken several times with the secretary immediately following his press conference in Geneva, and also just this morning as well," department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

He declined to go into details on the secretary's talks with Hill.

Sung Kim, chief of the Korean affairs office, stayed behind in case of a possible follow-up with the North Koreans, but it wasn't yet decided whether there would be more meetings, the spokesman said.

Hill, assistant secretary of state, met his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, for eight hours of negotiations to resolve an impasse on the six-party denuclearization talks.

He said that other members of the six-party talks -- South Korea, China, Russia and Japan -- have also been briefed and that discussions with the North Koreans would continue over the weekend.

The multilateral process has been stalled since Pyongyang missed a Dec. 31 deadline to submit a declaration disclosing its nuclear programs and proliferation activities. The U.S. is asking for a "complete and correct" declaration that must include the North's suspected uranium enrichment program (UEP) and past and present nuclear cooperation with other countries.

The North Korean envoy again denied on Thursday that his government has UEP and is proliferating to other nations.

North Korea had proposed the Geneva meeting after it missed a meeting in Beijing last month, suggesting that it was ready to negotiate, but the envoys had no agreements to announce.

"I want to stress this was not a decisional meeting," the U.S. envoy said at a midnight press conference. "We looked at some of the issues that have been problematic."

"We certainly are further along in this consultation than we were when we got off the plane this morning. So I would say there's been progress," said Hill.

(Yonhap)