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In comparison with the former three rounds of Korean nuclear issue talks, there are uncertainties in the current round, which has again become the focus of world attention.
This implies a more open-minded, flexible and pragmatic diplomacy in the ongoing negotiations. Such a diplomatic practice aims to help all parties to work for a real result for the talks in a more effective manner and seek an eventual solution to the nuclear deadlock which is in conformity with interests of all the six nations.
Before the talks reopened on Tuesday morning, it was widely considered that if the six parties, namely China, the US, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea, fail to overcome the impasse, the US and Japan will probably file the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue with the UN and the framework of six-way talks will be brought to an end. After the talks reopened, however, no end date was fixed. This uncertainty not only left sufficient time for diplomatic mediation, but also showed to the outside that all the six sides desired to make best of the opportunity of the talks to resolve the Korean nuclear issue as early as possible.
There were also uncertainties in contents and patterns of the current round of talks. It had great flexibility in agenda and topics, taking into account requirements of the multi-party diplomacy.
In the previous three rounds of talks, keynote addresses of chief delegates were arranged in the opening ceremonies. In this round, the keynote speeches that demonstrated the basic stances of the six nations were planned on the morning of the second day of talks. The new arrangement not only offered an additional chance for the delegates to get together, but also allow one-on-one contacts prior to the standpoint demonstration, in which each party would find out the other parties' bottom line. This was conducive to creating cozier atmosphere for the consultations.
The current round of talks has also had most of the time earmarked for small-scale bilateral and trilateral meetings. The timetables, objects, venues and contents of the meetings were totally up to delegates themselves to decide. Except for the opening session, all the agendas were yet to be determined. Even such important arrangements, such as chief delegates' meeting and plenary session, were subject to readjustment almost at any moment. Reporters discovered that concrete daily agendas of the talks were finalized in the previous evening and even in the morning of the very day when the arrangements performed.
Over the three days since the talks re-opened, host China alone held 12 one-on-one contacts with the other five parties. The open-ended, frequent bilateral diplomacy provided enough room for all the sides to exchange opinions, improve mutual understanding, dispel misunderstanding and reduce differences.
Contacts between North Korea and the US merited more attention.
Discarding negative attitudes in the former rounds of talks, the two almost held a one-on-one meeting every day in the current round of talks. Their first meeting lasted 75 minutes, and the time increased to nearly three hours in the third day of talks.
All of the meetings between North Korea and the US these days enjoyed a pragmatic atmosphere, albeit differences remained in the alleged uranium enrichment scheme of North Korea and in preconditions for the nation to dismantle nuclear programs. The somehow upbeat consultation aura added to signs of hope for a peaceful settlement of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue through dialogues.
(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2005)
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