Delegates to the fourth round of six-party talks concluded their eighth day of negotiations yesterday, still failing to reach an agreement on a draft joint document aimed at setting up a framework for the resolution of the Korean nuclear issue.  

The draft document, proposed by the Chinese delegation on July 30, has been debated over for nearly four days and revised for several times. But so far no progress has been made on finalizing the document.

"The latest draft put together by the Chinese delegation is a very negotiated document," said US chief negotiator Christopher Hill yesterday evening. "We were really getting close to the end of this round."

Despite apparent fatigue and anxiety, the negotiators decided to drag the record-long talks into the ninth day and continue to hold multilateral meeting today to make their final decision on the document.

The North Korean delegation, which has kept silent to the press ever since this round of talks started, finally expressed its view on the process yesterday afternoon, promising to exert "sincere endeavors" to narrow the differences and achieve a result for the talks.

"Over the past few days, North Korea held hours of consultations with the US. Though North Korea and the US have different opinions, we wish to minimize the differences and achieve a result in the talks," North Korean delegation head Kim Kye-gwan told reporters outside his country's embassy in Beijing.

He also reiterated North Korea's stance that Pyongyang's abandonment of its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons programs depends on whether the US removes its nuclear threat against the North and establishes mutual trust with Pyongyang.

Kim didn't utter any critical words on the US.

Jin Linbo, head of the Asia-Pacific Office under the China Research Institute of International Studies, held that the contention between North Korea and the US still focused on the "scope of nuclear disarmament" and the sequencing of action for the two sides.

"It is possible that the final document will only provide principles for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and leave the specific contentions for further negotiations," he said.

Song Min-soon, head of the South Korean delegation, said the draft joint document reflected the contents of the bilateral and multilateral consultations that had been held so far in a "concentrated and balanced" way.

He said the six parties had further coordinated their stances on the draft at yesterday's meetings.

A new draft will be tabled by the Chinese delegation at today's meeting, which is scheduled to start at 3:00 PM Beijing time, according to Song.

"Only after further consultations shall we know whether or not the new draft document will help achieve the six-party talks' goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula," Song said.

No date of conclusion was set for the fourth round of talks, which involve China, the US, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea. So far there is still no information suggesting how much longer the ongoing talks will last.

"We are not aware of whether at the end we will have an agreement or disagreement. We still don't know," Hill told the reporters when he was back to his hotel following yesterday's talks.

(Xinhua News Agency August 3, 2005)