U.S. officials will extend talks in Geneva with North Korea over nuclear disarmament, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said on Friday, saying considerable work was still needed before resuming six-party negotiations, according to Reuters. "It was a very good meeting," he told reporters. Hill will leave Geneva on Friday but hand over the bilateral discussions to Sung Kim, the State Department's head of Korean affairs, in an effort to progress toward multilateral talks, he said. "I think there might be another need for a consultation but frankly we'll all have to do a number of consultations with different parties before we have a six-party meeting." China chairs six-party talks that include North and South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan and that aim to get North Korea to account for and abandon its nuclear plans in exchange for aid and recognition. The United States said on Thursday it wanted to see faster progress in negotiations on North Korea's nuclear activities after a day of talks in Geneva with the secretive communist state. There has been significant progress in disabling Yongbyon but North Korea has slowed down the process in recent months, arguing the others have delayed keeping their end of the deal. North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programme under a 2005 agreement but the deal has been stalled by Pyongyang's failure to produce a detailed declaration of its nuclear programmes by the end of last year.
