BEIJING, July 31: The six nations seeking to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions on Sunday closed what was described as a “highly charged” sixth session, with delegates still struggling to hammer out a joint statement.

Negotiators met for nearly five hours at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse to review a draft statement presented by China on Saturday and seen as an initial step in laying down principles by which the three-year standoff might be resolved.

“There were fierce exchanges of words,” Japanese deputy delegate Akitaka Saiki told reporters, without elaborating.

Little progress was made, with one Japanese government official making it clear the fourth round of talks would head into a seventh day on Monday.

“I would say that the substantial negotiations on the text just began today,” the official told reporters.

Asked if progress had been made, the official replied: “It is not the case,” and added that “in some cases, differences in basic positions loomed and resulted in highly charged exchanges of views.”

The sixth day focused on the draft text put forward by host China, but many contentious issues were being put aside, said chief US envoy Christopher Hill.

“There is a lot of work going on back at the conference centre, a lot of drafting work there, trying to work on the text, bracketing language with differences,” Hill said as he returned to his hotel “It’s a lengthy, difficult process,” said Hill, who has repeatedly warned that significant hurdles remain.

Three previous rounds of talks failed, most recently in June 2004, and the Stalinist North refused for 13 months to rejoin the negotiations.

Although delegates, which include Japan, Russia, China and South Korea have said they were committed to making progress further signs of dissatisfaction emerged on Sunday.

Jiji Press, citing a Japanese delegation source, reported that Japan could not accept the draft in its current form because it did not refer to the Cold War kidnapping of Japanese by North Korea — a key stumbling block for Tokyo.

Another Japanese media report quoted sources as saying that although the draft called for the abandonment of nuclear programmes it did not include the word nuclear “dismantlement” as sought by the United States and Japan.

The draft did however reflect a key concern of the North, that it be given security guarantees in exchange for ending its atomic weapons programme, Kyodo news said.

“This negotiation framework is about realizing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, including North Korea, and what corresponding measures other parties should take for that,” Song Min-Soon, South Korea’s deputy foreign minister, said.

—AFP