Headway made on checking N.Korea nuclear claims

By Jack Kim

BEIJING (Reuters) - International envoys at talks on disarming North Korea made headway on Friday on verifying the communist state's own account of its nuclear activities, but big differences remained, officials said.

The talks by six countries aimed at coaxing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme are the first in nine months and come after Pyongyang last month produced a declaration of its nuclear activities, one of the big steps pledged under a broad disarmament-for-aid deal.

"On verification and monitoring mechanism, we took the common denominator from our positions and gave it to the working group as a basis for its discussions," South Korea's chief envoy Kim Sook told reporters.

"But on this issue, the differences in positions among the countries are large."

Asked to explain the differences, a South Korean official said North Korea and the other five countries disagreed on how the verification should proceed and who would take part.

"There are differences on whether the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should take part and what its role would be," he said, while not limiting the differences to questions about the U.N. nuclear agency.

Discussions at this newest round of talks did move beyond the subject of verifying the North's nuclear account and took up the issue of economic and energy aid for the impoverished and isolated state, South Korean officials said.

The negotiators, from North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China, are seeking to push forward a preliminary disarmament deal that saw Pyongyang freeze and begin disabling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.