Russia, China, Japan to present their ideas of stopping North Korea's nuclear programme

Thursday is the second day of the third round of the regional talks held by ranking diplomats from Russia, North Korea, the USA, China, South Korea and Japan in Beijing. They will discuss acceptable conditions for ending the North Korean nuclear weapons programme. The delegations of Russia, China and Japan will put forth their suggestions today (the other delegations did this yesterday).

Traditionally, the delegates sit at tables placed as a hexahedron. On the first day of their talks in the Diaoyutai State Guest House, they confirmed the common striving for making the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free. The head of the North Korean delegation said Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme was the brainchild of the hostile US policy. "Our goal is to protect ourselves from a nuclear attack," he said.

The USA demands that all nuclear facilities in North Korea be dismantled, but the republic is prepared only to freeze the nuclear weapons programme - on certain conditions.

The participants in the talks agree that nuclear programmes should be shut down in North Korea gradually, with a freeze at the first stage, to ensure further progress through mutual concessions.

Head of the Russian delegation Ambassador at Large Alexander Alekseyev said, "We are accumulating construction materials for building, at the end of the third or during the next round, a sufficiently firm foundation for the attainment of the ultimate goal - a nuclear-free status for the Korean Peninsula."