WASHINGTON (AFP) ? A US envoy will hold talks with his North Korean counterpart in Geneva Thursday in a new push for a full declaration from Pyongyang on all its nuclear programs, an official said Tuesday. Nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill will meet North Korea's Kim Kye-Gwan in a bid to move forward the six-party process involving the US, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. McCormack told reporters that Hill, who is the assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, chose the Swiss city because it was a "mutually agreeable location." Hill was in Beijing in mid-February for talks with Kim but emerged from the meeting with no report of progress and returned to the Chinese capital in early March in an effort to meet Kim, but the meeting did not take place. During her own visit to Beijing on February 26, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China -- North Korea's closest friend in the world -- to use "all influence possible with the North Koreans" to end an impasse. North Korea last year signed a deal to abandon all its nuclear weapons in exchange for badly needed energy and economic aid and major security and diplomatic benefits. But the disarmament process has been at an impasse since North Korea missed an end-2007 deadline to declare all its nuclear programs and disable its plutonium plant at Yongbyon. US officials have nonetheless touted progress in the disablement process, saying the deadline was missed for technical reasons. North Korea claims Washington has not lived up to its part of the bargaining, including removing Pyongyang from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. "This is part of the six-party process. They will be discussing ways in which to move that process forward," McCormack said of the Geneva meeting. "This phase has not yet been completed, and we need to try to push forward." He said the United States and the other members of the six-party process would press North Korea for a complete declaration on all its nuclear activities. "This should be a full and complete declaration and that means any proliferation activities, any activities related to highly enriched uranium, any activities related to plutonium. Full and complete," he said. Hill has raised concerns both about a suspected North Korean uranium enrichment program and suspicions Pyongyang may have transferred nuclear know-how to Syria. The United States is trying to break the deadlock by drafting with North Korea a separate declaration on its proliferation activities, a diplomatic source said. This additional declaration would then be submitted to the other countries in the six-party process and made public, the source added. McCormack insisted the diplomatic process was moving forward. "We're going to continue down this diplomatic track as long as we think it has life left in it. We believe it has life left in it," he added in response to a question how long the process would last.
