Sputtering talks on ending North Korea's nuclear plans will gain a higher profile this week with an unprecedented meeting of ministers, but lingering questions on the North's ambitions threaten to drag the process down.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will have her first meeting with the North's top diplomat, Pak Ui-chun, when foreign ministers from six countries involved in North Korean disarmament talks hold discussions at a forum in Singapore tentatively set for Wednesday.
The meeting will add momentum to a disarmament-for-aid deal the North struck with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, analysts said, but the informal gathering will likely shine little light on the North's secret plans to enrich uranium for weapons or proliferate technology for profit.
Rice told reporters before a refuelling stop in Ireland on Monday that she would make clear in her first meeting with North Korea this week it must meet its obligations and come clean on all aspects of its nuclear program.
"I believe there will be a very strong message that the obligations need to be met and that the verification protocol really needs to be completed and that it has to be a verification protocol that can give us confidence that we are able to verify the accuracy of the North Korean declaration," Rice said.
In recent weeks, the United States and North Korea have pushed the deal forward, with Pyongyang providing a long-delayed list of its plutonium inventory and Washington starting to take the North off a terrorism blacklist and removing trade sanctions.
"The unanswered issues would be handed over to the next president of the United States," said Kim Sung-han, Korea University international relations professor.
