Envoys from North Korea and the US have staked out sharply different positions at the start of six-nation talks to resolve a nuclear crisis, underscoring the difficulties of a breakthrough.
The United States today repeated its call for the complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes and stressed it had no intention of attacking a country it has branded part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
Delegates from North and South Korea, the US, China, Russia and Japan are meeting in Beijing for the second such meeting brokered by China.
"The United States seeks the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all the DPRK's (North Korea's) nuclear programmes, both plutonium and uranium-based," assistant secretary of state Mr James Kelly said.
The impasse has persisted for nearly 16 months with US insistence on irreversible dismantlement and North Korea saying only that it can freeze its programme in return for compensation.
Many analysts see little hope of substantive progress at the first talks since an inconclusive round last August because of deep mistrust between the two protagonists and disagreement over Pyongyang's suspected uranium enrichment programme.
The participants, aside from North Korea, seek a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. The North has said it is willing to freeze its weapons programme in exchange for compensation, a suggestion that raises hackles in the United States that is anxious not to be seen rewarding bad behaviour, especially in an election year.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted to a covert programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
The North has since denied such a scheme, although it does say it is pursuing atomic weapons through a plutonium-based programme.