US, NKorea to meet in Geneva to break nuclear impasse

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GENEVA, Mar 13 (AFP): The chief North Korean and US nuclear envoys meet here Thursday for the first time in a month, looking to break a deadlock that has stalled an international deal to end the North's nuclear programmes.
Kim Kye-Gwan and his US counterpart Christopher Hill will meet in a new push for a full declaration from Pyongyang on all its nuclear programmes and alleged atomic cooperation with Syria.
Talks are scheduled to begin at midday (1100 GMT) at the US diplomatic mission in Geneva, the United States said in a statement.
North Korea last year signed a landmark deal to abandon all its nuclear weapons in exchange for badly needed energy and economic aid and major security and diplomatic benefits.
But the process -- involving China, Japan, both Koreas, Russia and the United States -- has been stalled since North Korea missed an end-2007 deadline to declare all its nuclear programmes and disable its plutonium plant.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said Wednesday he hoped that the meeting would produce some tangible results.
"We hope that progress should be made at the Geneva talks so that the six-party process may move forward to the next stage and related countries start discussing the dismantling of nuclear facilities," Yu said.
"A complete and correct declaration is a key to moving to the next stage rather than when the North will declare its nuclear facilities."
At stake is a US call for North Korea to clarify its suspected uranium enrichment programme (UEP) and secret nuclear technology transfers to Syria.