Hill to meet N. Korean delegation over resumption of 6-way talks: State Dept.

By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (Yonhap) -- U.S. chief nuclear envoy Christopher Hill will meet with a North Korean delegation in New York Thursday to discuss resumption of multilateral nuclear talks stalled for months over verification of the North's nuclear facilities, a State Department official said.

"Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill will have a working dinner with the
North Korean delegation in New York today to discuss moving six-party talks
forward," the official said, asking anonymity.
Ri Gun, director general of the American Affairs bureau of North Korea's Foreign
Ministry, led the North Korean delegation to New York Tuesday to attend a seminar
Friday organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a
non-governmental organization.
The official said Sung Kim, special envoy for the six-party talks, will also
attend the dinner meeting with Ri and other North Korean delegates, and will
participate in the seminar.
Robert Wood, deputy spokesman at the State Department, said in a daily news
briefing, "Sung Kim is going to meet with the North Korean delegation that's here
for that conference in New York. And he's supposed to meet with the North Korean
delegation on November 6th."
The spokesman also said, "They're going to talk about, you know, the six-party
discussions. And we'll obviously be talking about verification."
The North Korean delegation will stay in New York until Monday, officials here said.
Ri, former deputy chief of the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New
York, doubles as deputy head of the North Korean delegation to the six-party
talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Kim accompanied Hill to Pyongyang for Hill's meeting with Kim Gye-gwan, head of
delegation to the six-party talks, in early October when the North Koreans were
reluctant to allow unfettered access to their nuclear facilities.
Soon after the visit, Pyongyang agreed to allow international monitors to inspect
facilities for verification of the nuclear list the North presented in June. That
was a major breakthrough for the talks, stalled for months over the verification
issue.
Washington then announced the removal of North Korea from the U.S. terrorism
blacklist. That brought criticism that the Bush administration accepted an
incomplete verification measure, which allows access to undeclared nuclear sites
only by "mutual consent," to make the North Korean nuclear issue a major foreign
policy achievement in its waning months.
U.S. officials said they expected the six-party talks to resume in mid-November.
The talks were originally expected to be held in late October or early November,
but ran into scheduling problems.