Negotiators from North Korea and the five nations struggling to remove its nuclear arsenal resumed their formal talks in Beijing Monday, Yonhap News reported.
This week's negotiations, the first session in five months, will focus on producing a deal outlining how to inspect Pyongyang's nuclear sites.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, who chairs the six-way talks, said in his opening speech that also high on agenda will be working out a timetable for ending the second phase in the three-tier denucleariation process and establishing a workable peace mechanism.
"All of those should be implemented in accordance with action-for-action principles," Wu said.
Heads of delegations from the two Koreas, China, the U.S., Russia, and Japan had a flurry of preliminary bilateral and trilateral meetings before the opening of the plenary session.
"We all know what we're supposed to get accomplished here ... and like all the six-party meetings it'll be difficult negotiations," chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters earlier in the day.
South Korean envoy Kim Sook also expressed pessimism over the upcoming talks. "There are many formats for a deal, but the core contents discussed during the trilateral meeting between South Korea, the U.S., and Japan should be included," Kim said, apparently referring to Washington's push for a set of scientific methods including sampling in verifying Pyongyang's self-claimed details of its nuclear inventory.
Kim had a one-on-one meeting with his North Korean counterpart a couple of hours before the opening of the six-way talks.
"The two sides had comprehensive discussions on the issues of a verification protocol, completing the second phase (of the denuclearization process), and economic and energy assistance," Cho Yun-soo, spokesman for the South Korean delegation, said.
"We emphasized the core part of the verification (of the North's recent nuclear claims)," he said. "The North Korean side showed keen interest in energy aid." South Korea chairs the working group for the provision of energy to the North under a six-party deal reached last year.
In his first meeting with the North's envoy in five months, the South Korean negotiator also emphasized the sincerity behind the Lee Myung-bak government's policy of co-prosperity, according to Cho.
Kim Kye-gwan, however, gave no specific response, only listening to Kim Sook's comments, Cho said.
Inter-Korean ties were strained with the launch of the Lee administration in February, which pledged to get tough on the communist neighbor. Their relations have worsened in recent weeks as the North has tightened its border controls.