Envoys to North Korean disarmament talks announced a three-week recess Sunday after 13 days of meetings, deadlocked over what the North would receive for renouncing atomic weapons and its insistence on retaining a peaceful nuclear program, AP reported Talks are to resume the week of Aug. 29, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told reporters. However, he warned that even after the break, «I can't say for sure that we will reach agreement.» The suspension was announced after the chief envoys from the six governments met Sunday morning in a final effort to produce a statement of principles meant to guide future negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to give up nuclear development. The disagreement over «peaceful nuclear activity» was «one of the very important elements that led us to fail to come up with an agreement,» Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, the chief North Korean delegate said. Kim, who spoke to reporters outside the North's embassy in Beijing, also insisted that the United States remove its «nuclear threat» from the Korean Peninsula, «We had to produce nuclear weapons because the United States is threatening us with nuclear weapons,» he said. Some 32,500 U.S. troops are based in South Korea, but Washington says no nuclear weapons are deployed there and that it has no intention of invading the North. --mor 1034 Local Time 0734 GMT
