The US chief negotiator to the six-party talks Christopher Hill will come to South Korea for consultations over the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, reported South Korean major news agency Yonhap on Sunday.

 

Hill is to arrive at Seoul on Monday, a day before the second stage of the fourth round six-party nuclear talks are to resume in Beijing on Tuesday.

 

In Seoul, Hill, who also serves as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, will meet South Korean top negotiator to the talks Song Min-soon, and Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-sik, Yonhap quoted sources at the South Korean Foreign Ministry as saying.

 

Hill is scheduled to leave for Beijing early Tuesday aboard the same airplane with the South Korean delegation.

 

The six participants of the talks, China, North Korea, the US, Russia, South Korea and Japan, originally agreed to restart the talks in the week begins with August 29 after three-week recess.

 

However resumption date of the negotiations was put off two weeks at the request of North Korean side.

 

In the first phase of the fourth round of the talks held in late July and early August, the US and North Korea had difference over the scope of the North Korean nuclear programs that should be dismantled.

 

The US insists that North Korea should give up all the nuclear programs, including the peaceful one. However, North Korea holds it should be granted of the right on peaceful utilization of nuclear power.

 

South Korean government clarified its standing over the issue during the recess of the fourth round of the six-party talks.

 

It said if North Korea scraps the nuclear weapon program, returns to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, accepts inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency, North Korea could be allowed to develop peaceful nuclear program.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 11, 2005)