By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The United States hinted at suspending promised energy aid to North Korea Thursday following the breakup of the latest six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambition, a report said Friday.
``Obviously, one of the things people think about is energy assistance,'' White House spokesperson Dana Perino was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying. ``I just saw the report and heard the news that Chris Hill was on his way back. So as soon as he's back, we'll try to see what the next steps are.''
Hill, the chief U.S. nuclear envoy, was en route back home after attending four days of nuclear talks in Beijing. The talks failed to produce any agreements on ways to check the accuracy of the nuclear inventory that North Korea submitted in June, casting a cloud over the prospects for the multilateral denuclearization forum involving the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia. North Korea refused to agree to surrender samples from its nuclear facilities.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, ``This is an action-for-action negotiation. I don't think you're going to see much action from other parties until North Korea acts.''
Under the so-called Feb. 13 deal reached last year, North Korea is supposed to receive one million tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent in aid and other political concessions from the five other countries, in return for disabling its nuclear facilities and programs.
The four, except for Japan, have shipped nearly 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent in aid to the North. Seoul, which chairs a six-party working group for energy assistance, has provided about 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and 66,000 tons of energy-related materials or equipment to Pyongyang.
Pyongyang has removed about 60 percent of spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
U.S. officials have said the North agreed verbally to the sampling in October when Hill visited Pyongyang, but Kim Kye-gwan, Pyongyang's chief nuclear negotiator, refuted it in Beijing Wednesday by saying that the North has a different understanding on that issue.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung-hwan said in a forum Friday that the nuclear issue would continue to be discussed in the six-way forum under the Obaman administration, dismissing growing pessimism about the nuclear talks.
Yu said the Obama administration would try to make direct contact with North Korea within the six-party framework.