hankyoreh

A new round of six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea opens in Beijing on Thursday, with the top nuclear envoy from the hard-line communist country predicting that it's going to be a make-or-break session.

This week's round, the first since July, will be held amid concerns over reports of North Korea's alleged nuclear cooperation with Syria. The suspicion threatened to undermine a sense of optimism spreading ahead of the talks.

Under the first-stage of a milestone aid-for-denuclearization deal struck in February with South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia, North Korea has shut down five key nuclear facilities.

Envoys agree that their main focus this week will be on how to implement the second phase of the February deal, under which North Korea should disable those facilities already shut down and disclose a full list of its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political rewards.

No timeframe has been set for the disablement stage of the deal but U.S. officials have expressed hope that the process will be completed by year's end and move on to the next and final stage of nuclear "endgame" or denuclearization.

"It's a very ambitious process, but I think it's doable," Christopher Hill, the top U.S. nuclear envoy, said after a meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, Wednesday night.

Kim earlier told reporters that this week's talks will likely be a turning point in the six-party process.

"It will be a very important round where the denuclearization will continue if the countries reach an agreement based on the measures taken so far or where such efforts will go back to the starting point if they fail to reach an agreement," he said.

Cun Yung-woo, South Korea's chief delegate, said he also anticipated tough negotiations in Beijing this week.

"Because the disablement-and-declaration phase is a road no one has ever walked on, setting a guideline and a milestone is going to be that difficult and important," he said.

Hill said his discussion with his North Korean counterpart also covered the issue of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

"I think I've made it very clear that the issue of proliferation, generally, has always been an issue and it continues to be," Hill said.

The chief South Korean negotiator, Chun, refused to comment on the alleged Pyongyang-Damascus nuclear cooperation, but said such concerns only add urgency to the need to end the North's nuclear ambition through dialogue.

"I have no comment at this time about the reports regarding Syria. However, problems like nuclear proliferation would not occur in the first place if we achieve the denuclearization of North Korea through the six-party talks," Chun told reporters on Wednesday.

The North's envoy, responding to a reporter's question, dismissed the reports of alleged nuclear cooperation between his nation and Syria, calling them a fabrication by "crazy" people.

The process of disabling the North's nuclear facilities is also linked to North Korea's demand to remove it from a U.S. list of "rogue" countries that sponsor terrorism. North Korea claims that Washington has already accepted its demand but U.S. officials have denied it.

This week's talks will be based on a report by a nine-member team of U.S., Chinese and Russian nuclear experts who visited the North's secretive main nuclear complex at Yongbyon earlier this month.

The team was invited by North Korea for an on-site survey of key facilities that have been shut down and discussions on how to disable them. Those facilities include the North's only functioning 5-megawatt plutonium-producing reactor.

U.S. officials on the team later said in Seoul that North Koreans were businesslike in meetings with them, which raised hope that the communist country may be really willing to follow through with the February deal.

The six-party talks were last held in July right after the North shut down its key nuclear facilities in return for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. The country is entitled to an additional 950,000 tons, or equivalent aid upon implementing the second-phase denuclearization steps. This week's talks are scheduled to continue until Sunday.

BEIJING, Sept. 27 (Yonhap)