Despite great expectations for a breakthrough deal on ending North Korea’s nuclear crisis four days of tough international negotiations sponsored by China have produced little hope of a quick resolution. The surge of optimism which accompanied the beginning of the talks on Thursday, vanished by the weekend when it became clear that North Korea wanted huge amounts of energy assistance in return for shutting down its nuclear programme. How the participating countries will foot the bill for the energy aid to North Korea, following the sealing of its main nuclear reactor, has become a new stumbling block in the tortuous negotiations. What comes first — the aid or the halt to the nuclear programme continued to plague the talks’ progress.

“The chicken or the egg modus operandi of the talks is something we have seen before,” Li Dunqiu, an expert on the Korean peninsula at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said. “The big sticking point is who is going to compromise first — North Korea or the US.” Pyongyang’s insistence on “first energy assistance, then denuclearisation” was the reason for the premature ending of an earlier phase of China-hosted talks. Four of North Korea’s neighbours — South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — and the US have conducted a series of multilateral talks with Pyongyang over the last three years, hoping to persuade the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-Il to give up its nuclear weapons. But the regime sees its arsenal as a bargaining chip for demanding aid and security assurances and has not made any steps towards disarming. Rather, Pyongyang used its ballistic missiles tests last July and its underground nuclear test in October to wring more concessions from China - its main trading partner, and South Korea, its largest humanitarian benefactor.

Analysts believe that North Korea’s nuclear provocations have also forced the US to agree to concessions it previously refused to consider, like holding bilateral talks with Pyongyang and negotiating over frozen North Korean funds. In 2005, the US riled Pyongyang by forcing Macao’s Banco Delta Asia to cease business with North Korea because of accusations of money laundering. In retaliation, Pyongyang boycotted the six-party talks until December. Last month the US had one-on-one talks with North Korea in Berlin, paving the way for Pyongyang’s return to the negotiating table. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan claimed on Sunday that during the Berlin talks Washington promised to lift financial sanctions imposed on North Korea within 30 days in return for North Korea taking the first step towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme within 60 days.

The US pointsman for the six-party talks, Christopher Hill, denied the report in the Asahi newspaper that North Korea and the US had signed a “memorandum” in their Berlin meet. North Korea is said to have demanded energy aid equivalent of 2 million Kw a year, in exchange for taking steps to scrap its nuclear programme. But this is far more than the 500,000 tons of heavy fuel set out in the 1994 agreement. With the negotiations concluding on Monday, China has proposed the setting up of working groups that would continue talks on the amount of energy aid and the way the participating parties would share the cost. — IPS