Six-nation nuclear crisis talks put off until next year: report

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2003

TOKYO (AFP) — Six-nation nuclear crisis talks will not resume this month as the United States is insisting the abolition of North Korea's nuclear weapons is open to international scrutiny, Japanese press reports said.

The plan for holding, by the end of this year, a second round of the talks, which were initiated in Beijing last August, has been abandoned "for technical reasons," the TV Asahi network reported citing a Japanese diplomatic source.

Foreign Ministry press secretary Hatsuhisa Takashima told AFP that he had no information on the reported delay.

The influential daily Asahi Shimbun said the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan, had revised a Chinese-drafted joint statement for the talks because it was seen as ambiguous on the...