Top U.S. nuclear talks negotiator Christopher Hill on Saturday reiterated the need of a "verifiable" nuclear declaration of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
"We need the declaration verifiable," Hill, assistant Secretary of State, told reporters after meeting with officials from China, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan and Russia in Beijing.
"We are not looking to verify their declaration now, and we are looking to come up with the rules of how we will verify it in the future," Hill noted.
Hill said the way to make it verifiable is to have a verification protocol. A declaration without protocol is like having "one chopstick". "You need two chopsticks if you are going to pick up anything," he noted.
"We cannot have a declaration without means to verify it," he noted.
Hill met with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei Saturday morning to discuss the six-party talks process. Hill also met with Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Jieyi to discuss bilateral relations and other security issues. Hill said the meetings were "good".
Hailing China's "crucial" role as chair of the six-party talks, Hill said "China has done really excellent job." "They work very hard, very active," he noted.
The DPRK handed over the long-awaited nuclear declaration list in late June and then blew up a cooling tower in its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. On Aug. 26, the DPRK said it had stopped disabling its nuclear facilities and considered restoring the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, attributing its move to the U.S. failure to remove it from a terrorism blacklist.
"Actually, reconstituting Yongbyon is not an easy piece of work", Hill said, noting that it will take more than a year.
Hill said the focus now is on the verification protocol. The DPRK will be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism "since we know that we will be able to pursue the verification," he noted.
Source: Xinhua
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