By Park Song-wu
Korea Times Correspondent


BEIJING _ Top negotiators in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program might consider a new draft statement of principles to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, Seoul’s top envoy to the forum said on Friday.

``The door is open for a new draft since the trilateral meeting of the two Koreas and the U.S. (on Thursday),’’ Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told reporters. ``We will try to work on the draft continually. But we have to wait and see whether we can file it with the plenary session (of top delegates).’’

A day earlier, South Korea mediated between North Korea and the U.S. to rev up the talks, which faltered on Wednesday as the North refused to endorse the latest draft, designed by China to move the six-way denuclearization talks forward.

Characterizing the meeting as ``planting a seed,’’ Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s deputy envoy, told reporters that it remained to be seen whether the seed fell on fertile land or sterile soil.

Song indicated that the new draft would have ``creative ambiguity,’’ regarding the scope of nuclear dismantlement.

``A result of the negotiations should be clear,’’ he said. ``But if a compromise for such clearness is impossible to come by, it would be inevitable to exercise what we call creative ambiguity. It’s not a good time to say whether such ambiguity is necessary now, but we need to negotiate further.’’

In a late-night press meeting on Thursday, North Korea’s chief delegate, Kim Kye-gwan, told reporters that the talks are ``at a stalemate,’’ saying that ``only one country’’ is opposing Pyongyang’s right to conduct peaceful nuclear activities.

Washington’s position was unswerving. Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator, implied the next morning that North Korea is unreliable.

``We have concerns as we look back to the recent past and how a research reactor over the course of several weeks returned to a weapons producing facility,’’ Hill said. ``Clearly that has to be a concern to anyone looking at the issue of nuclear energy in North Korea.’’

On Dec. 12, 2002, North Korea announced that it reactivated nuclear facilities at Yongbyon that were frozen under the 1994 deal with the U.S. Just 19 days later, North Korea expelled U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors. In January 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

No end date has been set for this round of talks, the fourth of its kind since 2003. The past three rounds, which have been participated in by the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, each lasted only three or four days.

U.S. officials said in October 2002 that North Korea allegedly acknowledged having a secret uranium enrichment program, key to the development of nuclear weapons, touching off the second nuclear crisis.

im@koreatimes.co.kr