Sorting out the details of shutting down North Korea's nuclear programme is the topic of two days of talks that began Thursday in north-east China, DPA reported. South Korean negotiators in Shenyang said the aim of the meeting is to set deadlines to fulfil a February agreement for North Korea to shut down its entire nuclear programme and open up it to inspections, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. Participants were expected to discuss what the next steps would be for North Korea after it shut down its main nuclear reactor last month. The working group meeting was being held as part of larger six-nation talks on Pyongyang's atomic programme. Those talks involve both Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. They were also expected to prepare for the next round of six-nation talks in Beijing, planned in late August or at the beginning of September, and a later ministers meeting. The participant for the United States is its chief nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, who said he expected "substantive discussions of some technical issues." North Korea had dispatched Ri Gun, the director of the North American bureau in Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry. Ahead of the Shenyang meeting, the United States and North Korea held bilateral talks in Beijing, at which Hill met with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan.
