Wed Sep 14, 5:22 PM ET
BEIJING - North Korea insisted Wednesday it should get a nuclear reactor to generate electricity in exchange for abandoning atomic weapons development, but the main U.S. envoy at disarmament talks said Washington and its partners have no intention of meeting the demand
After his first one-on-one meeting with the North Korean delegation at this round of six-nation talks on the communist nation's nuclear program, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the sides "did not make a lot of progress."
The talks resumed Tuesday after a five-week recess, and also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The last session failed to yield an agreement after 13 days of meetings, and no end date has been set for these negotiations.
Under the offer on the table, North Korea would receive economic aid and security guarantees from Washington along with free electricity from South Korea for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
But the Pyongyang regime has also asked for a light-water nuclear reactor, a type believed to be more difficult to be diverted for weapons use.
The North was to get two such reactors in a 1994 deal with the United States under which it agreed to give up nuclear arms. That project stalled in late 2002, when U.S. officials said the North admitted to having a secret arms program in violation of the earlier agreement.
The White House has been highly critical of the earlier deal, which was reached by the Clinton administration, and says it will not repeat what it sees as past mistakes.
Hill noted Wednesday that North Korea has pursued a nuclear program for 25 years and used it solely to make weapons-grade plutonium for atomic bombs � not for generating electricity.
"Not a single light bulb has been turned on as a result of the nuclear reactor in North Korea," he said, referring to the country's main atomic facility in Yongbyon.
Hill also noted that the North has withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and expelled international atomic inspectors.
North Korean diplomats did not comment on the day's talks. But the North's chief negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, said Tuesday that his country had a right to a peaceful nuclear program, China's official news agency reported.
Hill warned that the demand for a reactor could become a "major problem" at the talks.
"There's not too many other ways I know how to say 'no' without slipping into another language," Hill said of his meeting with the North's delegation.
None of the other countries at the talks has stepped forward with an offer to foot the estimated $2 billion to $3 billion cost for building a light-water reactor for North Korea, Hill said, noting it would also take up to a decade to construct.
"These are reactors that cost a considerable amount of money, they take a considerable amount of time, and in the meantime ... the same amount of electricity can be pumped into the DPRK in a much shorter time and we can get the DPRK lit up a little more than it is today," he said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name.
The South Korean offer to provide the North with electricity could begin delivering power in a few years.
"It gives no one any pleasure that the DPRK is literally one of the darkest countries in the world," Hill said. North Korea "needs to be a little realistic about what it needs to do to get its economy going and get its energy needs met," he said.
The North suffers from chronic energy shortages and disruptions that leave the country a black void on nighttime satellite photos.
Meanwhile, North Korean and Japanese diplomats at the talks met to discuss Tokyo's concerns about its citizens that the communist state admitted abducting. The North Koreans said they were studying the issue, but Japan pressed for a quick response, chief Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae said.
Also Wednesday, Cabinet ministers of the two Koreas met in Pyongyang. Seoul's top official on the North, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, urged the North to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The North "must seize on this historic opportunity," Chung said, according to pool reports. "Delaying will do no good."