Agreement may come on 11th day of six-party talks

Six-party talks enter the eleventh day Friday. The previous ones led to minimum result concerning North Korea nuclear disarmament. The communist state insists it should have the right to keep its civilian atomic reactors in peaceful purposes.

A meeting late last night in Beijing of chief delegates from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. failed to convince North Korea to accept a statement principles calling for the end of all its nuclear activities in exchange for electricity, food, economic and security guarantees.

“Every country in the world has the right to peaceful nuclear activities," Kim Kye Gwan, the vice foreign minister of North Korea, told reporters after the meeting. “We are not a loser of a war nor have we committed any crime."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill Thursday vowed to stay at the talks until North Korea agrees to give up its entire nuclear program. North Korea, which said in February it had built nuclear weapons, may have as many six bombs, Bloomberg reports.

“The talks may not be a success, but it's OK," said Charles Pritchard, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former State Department special envoy for talks with North Korea. “We've laid the groundwork for some serious negotiations in the future."

Hill will meet Kim later Friday, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, citing comments from Hill.

Despite the impasse, a chink of light emerged with an apparent new proposal put forward by South Korea which brokered a meeting with North Korea and the US Thursday, Forbes informs.

It was not clear what was suggested but Seoul has already offered to supply its isolated neighbour with some 2,000 megawatts of electricity if it abandons its nuclear ambitions.

A South Korean official characterised the meeting as 'planting a seed'.

"It remains to be seen if the seed fell on fertile land or barren and dry land," he was quoted as saying by Forbes.

The fourth round of talks, which come after a 13-month stalemate, have been the longest since the process began in 2003. They resumed after the reclusive regime raised the stakes in February by declaring it already has nuclear bombs.

All previous rounds ended inconclusively and a collapse of the latest round could tempt Washington to take the issue to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.

The crisis erupted in October 2002 when the US accused the North of running a secretive uranium enrichment program.