Published: August 03, 2005
China Leads Effort in North Korea Six-Party Talks
By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze 
China is making a major effort to advance the current round of Six-Party Talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.
The current round of six-party talks began July 25 after a gap of more than one year. In these talks, China has been working hard to resolve the issues of all parties.
The six delegations are from North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the U.S. Ambassador Hill said a fourth draft of a resolution is being "looked at very carefully" in Washington and in the other delegations' capitals.
"Overall, it's a good draft," "Certainly we're at the stage where there's an effort to try to reduce the differences and therefore reduce the amount of commentary on these drafts," Hill said.
The Ambassador could not determine if all the parties would accept the draft or estimate when the current round of talks might end.
"I think the issue is how one winds this up," he said. "That is, does it wind up with an agreement? Does it wind up with parties saying we need to do some more substantial consultations in capitals? Does it wind up in a flat out disagreement?"
Noting the huge amount of work that has been done over the last week, Hill said he hoped that parties could "lock in" progress made to date.
"And, if there can't be an agreement, people are looking at whether you can lock it in by having some kind of recess while people check more thoroughly in capitals," he added.
"People made a lot of compromises in the language to see if we could actually reach the agreement," Hill said.
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