U.S. and North Korea talks to resume after delay (Reuters)

GENEVA (Reuters) ? U.S. and North Korean officials planned a second day of talks on Tuesday aimed at getting wider nuclear disarmament negotiations back on track and improving their strained relationship but the resumption was delayed for undisclosed reasons.

The talks, which had been scheduled to start at 0800 GMT (4 a.m. EDT), were pushed back by several hours at the request of North Korea, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva said in a brief statement that declined to elaborate.

Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, was now due to attend a working lunch and an afternoon session, both at the diplomatic mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), it said.

Bosworth, speaking to reporters in Geneva late on Monday after a first day of meetings and joint dinner, gave an upbeat assessment saying that the talks were "moving in the right direction" but that differences needed to be narrowed further.

"I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but as I said we have made some progress, but we have issues still to resolve and we will work hard to do that," he said, giving no details.

The United States and North Korea held bilateral talks in New York in late July, the first since six-party talks over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program collapsed in 2009.

Bosworth was accompanied by Glyn Davies, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog who has been named his successor, in the Geneva talks with First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan.

North Korean officials in Geneva were not available for comment despite repeated attempts to clarify why the two-hour morning session had been canceled.

Earlier on Tuesday, a North Korean official told Reuters: "After the morning session my delegation is arranging lunch in honor of the U.S. delegation. At this moment my delegation does not expect to make a statement after the talks."

Bosworth was tentatively expected to give a news briefing later on Tuesday at the U.S. mission.

URANIUM ENRICHMENT KEY QUESTION

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang that a moribund 2005 deal should be the basis for fresh talks about Pyongyang's nuclear activity, Chinese state media said on Tuesday, leaving unanswered a key question on uranium enrichment, a possible pathway to atom bombs.

The United States and South Korea insist that the North immediately halt its uranium enrichment work, which it unveiled last year, as a precursor to restarting regional talks that offer economic aid in return for denuclearization by Pyongyang.

In his meeting with Li, Kim repeated that North Korea was willing to revive six-party talks -- also involving Russia and Japan -- that it abandoned after the United Nations imposed fresh sanctions for a long-range North Korean missile test. The following month, Pyongyang conducted a second nuclear test.

"Kim said the DPRK hopes the six-party talks should be restarted as soon as possible," said the Xinhua news agency report on Tuesday of the meeting between Kim and Li in North Korea on Monday night.

The North's uranium enrichment program, which opens a second route to developing an atom bomb along with its plutonium program, is not specifically referred to in the 2005 pact.

The North says that it is enriching uranium only for power generation and argues that the 2005 agreement respects its right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111025/pl_nm/us_korea_north_us

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