WASHINGTON, March 10 (Yonhap) -- U.S. and North Korean nuclear envoys will meet in Geneva this week to seek a breakthrough in the stalled denuclearization talks, sources here said Monday.
Christopher Hill, assistant U.S. secretary of state, will depart Tuesday evening and is expected to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, during his stay there Thursday and Friday, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hill was scheduled to go to Poland later this week to attend the opening of an East Asia and Pacific center at a university in Warsaw.
Sung Kim, director of Korean affairs, will travel with Hill.
The talks would be critical in determining whether the denuclearization process, stalled for more than two months, can move forward.
"The general atmosphere is positive," one source told Yonhap. "But we still have to wait and see." The two envoys will meet amid a flurry of efforts, with the help of Beijing, to restart the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, members of this multilateral forum, have signed on to a series of agreements that eventually would dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and programs.
The process has snagged, however, after North Korea missed the Dec. 31 deadline to submit a declaration detailing its atomic activities plus any proliferation. Pyongyang, suspected of attempting uranium enrichment and transferring nuclear technology to other countries, has been reluctant to provide a full accounting of such activities.
Hill and Kim met in Beijing last month and discussed a compromise proposal that, instead of having North Korea unilaterally presenting the declaration, would state the respective positions of the U.S. and North Korea on issues covered in the disclosure.
Hill's effort to meet Kim again a few days later, apparently to get Pyongyang's response, did not materialize.
A separate source, also cautious about predicting this week's outcome, said North Korea's decision to come to Geneva "indicates there may be progress this time." The U.S. envoy, showing some frustration at the delay, said last week that he wants to see Pyongyang's declaration by the end of this month. The six-party roadmap, planned in three phases, envisions the start of North Korea's nuclear dismantlement this year. In return, the other governments promised a broad range of economic and political incentives, including Washington's ultimate diplomatic normalization with Pyongyang.
