U.S. nuclear envoy returns to U.S., briefings planned by deputies

BEIJING, Oct. 4 Kyodo - Top U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill headed back to Washington on Saturday after a trip to North Korea, but he left two deputies in the region for further briefings to countries involved in the six-party denuclearization process.

Sources close to the multilateral talks said one of the deputies remains in
Seoul and the other in Beijing to give those countries additional briefings on
the Pyongyang trip once Hill has a chance to meet with U.S. State Secretary
Condoleezza Rice.
While Hill held talks with representatives of China, Japan, Russia and South
Korea on Friday and Saturday, he left out some details because he had not yet
briefed his own boss, according to the sources.
Hill, who is assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs,
has told reporters that his talks with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim
Kye Gwan were ''very substantive and lengthy.''
He has declined to discuss details of the discussions or even to characterize
them.
''I will be meeting with Secretary Rice to discuss the full situation, and wait
her instructions on her next steps,'' Hill told reporters at Beijing's
international airport shortly before his departure.
He said he believed briefing his counterparts in the process was ''useful.''
''As we look at the future, we need to really work very closely together and so
these discussions were very much a part of our process,'' he said.
Hill visited North Korea this week to try to revive the faltering
denuclearization process and stop the country from rebuilding a nuclear complex
that can make weapons-grade plutonium.
While the contents of Hill's discussions with Kim remains unknown, there were
hints of developments, with the Japanese delegate saying Friday that while it
was ''too early'' to evaluate the results, the talks ''did not break down.''
The U.S. envoy traveled to Seoul from Pyongyang through the truce village
Panmunjeom on Friday and briefed his South Korean and Japanese counterparts
there.
He met with Wu and the Russian ambassador to China in Beijing on Saturday.
Additional briefings will be carried out in Seoul by Sung Kim, special envoy
for the six-party talks, and in Beijing by Paul Haenle, the National Security
Council's director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, the sources said.
The briefings are expected to take place after Monday.
U.S. envoy Kim is expected to travel to Tokyo as well.
The six-way denuclearization talks have stalled due to differences between
Washington and Pyongyang over the verification of information North Korea has
provided about its nuclear programs.
The standoff delayed the removal of North Korea from the U.S. blacklist of
terror-sponsoring countries, which in turn prompted Pyongyang to begin work to
restore the Yongbyon nuclear complex, which was in the process of being
disabled as part of a six-party deal.