Delay hits N. Korea nuke talks
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North Korea says it will get rid of its nuclear weapons if the United States assures its security.
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N. Korea says it will dismantle its nuclear weapons program when the U.S. drops its 'hostile' policy.
North Korean television's own version of reality TV, starring none other than leader Kim Jong Il.
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BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The closing of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis has been delayed due to "technical reasons", China says.
Reports said North Korea was demanding last minute revisions to a planned joint statement that was to be issued at 11:00 a.m. (0300 GMT).
It was then announced the concluding ceremony would be delayed by an hour, but since then top negotiators at the talks have sat down for further consultations.
It was unclear what North Korea wanted to alter in the joint statement.
Japanese and South Korean media reports prior to the delay said the unsigned statement failed to deliver any significant breakthroughs apart from a tentative agreement to meet again in the next few months.
The statement also pledged to create lower level working groups to help find a resolution to the crisis and vowed that the Korean Peninsular needed to be denuclearized, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
South Korean and U.S. officials have refused to confirm the report.
The fact that it appears so difficult to reach agreement on a joint statement underscores how big the diplomatic gulf between North Korea and the United States is.
Gulf
Despite various reports during the talks of positive progress towards ending the standoff, there has been little evidence the gap between both sides had narrowed at all.
China's chief negotiator, Wang Yi, said the delegates faced "differences, difficulties, and contradictions" during the talks, dragging them into a fourth day Saturday.
Saturday's meet was in an attempt to hammer out differences between the parties, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Friday.
Reports said China had been pushing to get some concrete achievements from the talks after the host spent six months of diplomatic wrestling to set up a second round of discussions.
The United States has described the talks as "useful" and Russia said they were "down to earth."
But there have been little inroads towards any possible resolution with the two rivals North Korea and the United States appearing to do little to find common ground.
After announcing Thursday its long stated demand that North Korea would get rid of its nuclear weapons if the United States assured its security, Pyongyang blamed a "hardline" U.S. stance for impeding the talks and insisted Washington end what it called "hostile actions."
Pyongyang wants a nonaggression treaty with the United States, or at least a security guarantee from all five of its negotiating partners, before it halts its nuclear program.
Washington has refused to sign a nonaggression treaty with North Korea or offer aid to the country, saying it will not give into blackmail. But the U.S. has said it was prepared to offer North Korea a written security guarantee.
The standoff between the United States and North Korea flared in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang admitted to secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
In his 2002 State of the Union address, U.S. President George W. Bush said North Korea was a rogue state and part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.
Recently, Pakistan revealed that rogue scientist A.Q. Khan provided North Korea with technology and know-how to make a uranium-based bomb to complement the country's plutonium-based weapons program.
Kim Jong Il's regime, however, has denied the existence of a uranium program. Getting such an admission from the North is high on Washington's agenda.
"I think the uranium enrichment program is the 800-pound gorilla in the negotiating room. You can't solve a problem if you deny that it exists or if you wish it away," Undersecretary of State John Bolton said.
-- CNN Beijing Producer Steven Jiang and Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy contributed to this report
