The US side is waiting for the response for North Korea after a bilateral meeting between the two chief delegates on Sunday, chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said in Beijing on Sunday.

"I have met with Kim (Kim Kye-Gwan, top North Korean negotiator) before I came here...he said he had some ideas... Mr Kim said he will think about them and maybe get back to the Chinese side again," Hill told reporters after visiting an American art exhibition at the National Museum of China. "There are some ideas they  are going to think about and respond to. So I think we will have ideas when we have a delegation meeting later this afternoon," Hill said.

Besides a series of one-on-one meetings aimed at narrowing their differences, chief negotiators to the six-party talks are also scheduled to meet together at 4: 00 PM Sunday afternoon.

The six-party talks on the Korean nuclear issue entered the fourth day on Sunday, with parties remaining divided on compensation measures for North Korea.

Unlike the Japanese chief delegate said earlier Sunday that the current situation is "not optimistic", Hill described the current situation as "a good sign".

"When you work on some issue, some other issue pumps up. Nothing else pumps up and it's just one issue, so it's a good sign," Hill said, adding that the host China works hard "at critical moments". Envoys from host China, North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia reconvened the talks on Thursday in Beijing in the wake of a 48-day recess.

(Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2007)