Chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said on Saturday in Tokyo that North Korea wishes to resume the dialogues on its nuclear weapons programme as soon as possible, DPA reported. "We agreed on the need to get back on the six-party talks as soon as possible," Hill told reporters in Tokyo about the talks he held with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan in Berlin earlier this week. Hill called the meeting "useful" and added: "I thought it was significant that the DPRK did want to proceed with six-party talks and I think there was a view between the two of us that we should try to have the six-party talks as soon as we can have them." DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. In Tokyo, Hill met with his Japanese counterpart to discuss the prospects of resuming the six-party talks and to reaffirm Japan's cooperation in the talks, media reports said. The assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and his counterpart Kenichiro Sasae were to discuss the groundworks for the next round of six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. Upon arrival on Saturday, Hill said he hoped to resume the negotiations later this month at the earliest, adding that it would depend on the party's host country China to see it happen, according to Kyodo News Agency. Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said Hill would brief Sasae on the details of his three-day talks with North Korean negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, in Berlin earlier this week. Sasae, director general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, is expected to report to Hill that Japan would encourage North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme and take various actions including accepting inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Kyodo said, quoting an official. Hill is to leave for Beijing on Sunday.
