BEIJING _ International talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions ended Friday with no agreement on the timeline for the declaration and disablement of the North's nuclear programs, despite the North's shutdown last week of its nuclear facilities under a February deal.
Nuclear envoys at the latest round of six-party talks, however, agreed to hold another round in early September, according to a chairman's statement released at the end of the three-day talks.
Foreign ministers of the six countries will also get together as soon as possible after the next round of the talks, the statement said.
The Chinese chairman of the negotiations, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, said five working groups will convene meetings in August to discuss the scheduling of the next phase of the denuclearization and other issues involved.
The talks involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas were originally scheduled to end Thursday, but delegates extended them to Friday.
North Korea shut down the Yongbyon complex on Saturday in the first phase of denuclearization under the February agreement, in which the North promised to declare and disable all of its nuclear programs.
The chief South Korean nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo refused to call this week's talks a failure, saying the goal was to build up the momentum created by the North's shutdown of the Yongbyon facilities.
"We discussed how to set timelines and what would be considered the next milestone, but those are very difficult and complicated issues, and no one had ever thought we would be able to reach that in the first place," Chun told a press briefing Thursday.
Christopher Hill, the top U.S. nuclear envoy, said at the beginning of this week's talks that he wanted to come up with "sort of a work plan" that would guide the communist nation
through disablement of the Yongbyon facilities before the end of the year.
He said Thursday there will be no additional commitments from North Korea at this week's talks, but only because the countries are reluctant to ask Pyongyang to make promises it cannot keep.
"We don't want to put out dates that can't be supported at this point, that can only be supported in theory," Hill told reporters.
Future negotiations will likely focus on the sequencing of the North's declaration and disablement of its nuclear programs and the provision of 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and other benefits to the North in exchange for its steps.
"I am very pleased with the clarity that we've got going forward in order to tackle this next phase," Hill said Thursday.
(Yonhap)