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Hill made the comments in Beijing at a briefing Monday following meetings with his Chinese counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. He characterized discussions as "very useful" and "a good opportunity to review where we are in the process."
The Chinese initiative to resolve tensions, especially with the United States, over North Korea's nuclear ambitions began in August 2003. Besides those three nations, talks involve South Korea, Japan, and Russia.
It took two years for negotiators to hammer out a statement on common principles for denuclearization in Sept. 2005. Another accord reached on Feb. 13 this year outlined initial actions parties were to take within 30 and 60 days to push the process forward. However, both the United States and North Korea failed to keep promised deadlines.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Pyongyang over the weekend for the first time since a breakthrough visit by Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in March. The agency was looking for "terms of reference" enabling it to begin shutting down then sealing the regime's flagship Yongbyon nuclear facility.
Resumption of talks between North Korea and the IAEA was "an event we've been looking forward to" Hill said, adding it was "an important pivot away from banking matters that have held us up for a long time."
Hill made several remarks about U.S. Treasury Department policies, which have twice derailed diplomatic momentum. He also mentioned Russia's role in removing stumbling blocks on the banking issue acting as a catalyst to get talks going once again.
The U.S. envoy said: "Obviously this banking issue took a long time, longer than many of us wanted to see ... I think a lot of us have learned a lot about banking in the process, for what that's worth."
Whether it was a result of poor inter-bureaucracy communication or part of a strategy to limit North Korea's participation in the international financial system, the Treasury Department's actions against Banco Delta Asia, a bank in China's special administrative region of Macau resulted in North Korean negotiators storming out of six-party talks twice.
The first instance was two years ago, when Treasury officials pressured Macanese bank regulators to freeze US$25 million dollars in assets held at the bank, because of suspected involvement in helping North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering activities. The second walkout occurred in mid-March, when Treasury said it would not oppose the release of North Korea's frozen funds, but also slapped new regulations that forbid U.S. financial institutions from doing business with BDA ever again.
This decision resulted in a three-month morass, forcing the Treasury and State Departments to hold complex protracted negotiations with Chinese mainland and Macanese banking officials, as well as private accounts doing business with North Korea that were caught in the tangle.
Last week Russian officials removed the bottleneck preventing resumption of nuclear talks by agreeing to act as a conduit for transferring funds to North Korea. Hill noted Russia's contribution in cleaning up the U.S. mess.
The key to reviving forward momentum in the six-party talks is for negotiators to reach critical mass in several areas, starting with North Korea living up to its obligations for the initial phase of the agreement signed by all parties on Feb. 13.
Progress also hinges on reviving five working groups that have not met since March. Each is tasked with handling technical sub-issues crucial to the overall development of six-party talks: denuclearization, efforts to normalize North Korean diplomatic ties with the United States and Japan, energy aid, plus establishing a Northeast Asia security mechanism.
Hill said negotiations were behind schedule, but would soon be back on track. Asked how long the process would take, he said, "a matter of weeks, not months; probably not days, but weeks."
The first hurdle requires North Korea and the IAEA to work out how the nuclear watchdog organization will be able to complete its task of closing and sealing the Yongbyon site in a verifiable manner. Hill said South Korea is placing an order for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, the first tranche of energy assistance promised once Pyongyang fulfils its February promises.
Hill said all six countries must be "quite active diplomatically, and imaginative diplomatically" in order to meet the goal of completing second-phase actions by the end of the calendar year. "I think political will is something we're going to need, but from a technical point of view it is quite doable," the envoy said.
