Evening walk-through, St. Regis Hotel, Beijing, China -- September 27, 2007

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Good evening.

QUESTION:  How were today’s discussions?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, I don’t have all that much to report -- except our delegation had bilaterals with all the other delegations, discussing what we hope to accomplish during this Six-Party meeting.  At 4 o’clock we had a plenary meeting.  And the purpose of the plenary meeting was to have all the five working groups report in, which we did.  And then we had some additional discussions.  

I think what we’ll try to do tomorrow is, we’ll meet in a head of delegation meeting in the morning, hear from the experts who were in Yongbyon, and then we’re hoping sometime tomorrow we can circulate a text for a joint statement for this round.  And we hope it will be a kind of roadmap that will take us through the end of the year.  So that’s what we plan tomorrow.  I think all the working groups were pretty positive.  I met with the DPRK in the morning.  Then I had the second meeting with the Chinese, where we kind of reviewed how we are going to proceed, and met with the others after that.

QUESTION:  Do you have some kind of basis that you’re certain that we will get to see the text circulated?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We discussed the idea that we could begin to circulate the text, and we talked about what might be in the text.  So probably in the morning there will be a drafting committee to start working on something that will circulate later in the morning.

QUESTION:  Can you share some details about what the text would have?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  It will be a roadmap for the rest of this calendar year.  And, of course, key for us would be the disablement steps that would be agreed and the declaration.

QUESTION:  Were you able to narrow your differences with North Korea on disablement?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Basically we agreed on most of the disablement measures, and we made some proposals for additional measures that we felt might be doable.  And we’ll just see if anything is possible tomorrow morning.

QUESTION:  How about the declaration?  Did you agree on how much North Korea need to declare?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think we have some more work to go on the declaration, because we’re really focusing mainly on the disablement.  So we need to do a little more work on what that declaration might look like.

QUESTION:  Will there be additional discussions after the document is (inaudible)?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think we’re all agreed that there will be a declaration.  But there is some discussion about, could we have a two-phase declaration -- things like that.  So I think we have to have some more discussions about that.

QUESTION:  How is this going to be different from the declaration after the last round?  It sounds like it’s pretty much the same stuff.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, no, I think it will be much more specific in terms of timing.  Also it has to layout how the fuel oil is provided.  So it will be more detailed.  I mean, I can’t promise you it will be exciting or anything or particularly newsworthy, but it will be detailed.  Newsworthy to me.

QUESTION:  You spent a lot of time this afternoon looking at what the legal requirements are for the lifting of the DPRK from the state-sponsor of terrorism list.  Can you say, are there things that you still want to know about the ’87 Korean Air bombing or the Red Army Faction people living in North Korea?  Are those incidents irrelevant to the legal requirements and political requirements in terms of legal definitions?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, we have gone over the details of those incidents to be sure.  Legal definitions -- you can look it up, it’s on the web.  But it basically refers to a country not having a terrorist incident in the previous period of time.  And I believe it has a Presidential notice period that goes to Congress that remains in Congress for forty-five days, after which the secretaries in power could move it then.  So I think you can get it in the U.S. Government website.

QUESTION:  Are you concerned about the move in the House to put congressional pressure?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, there are house bills proposed every day on a variety of subjects.  Certainly for any activity such as that we would be doing a lot of consultations on the Hill, which is pretty standard procedure if we get to that point.

QUESTION:  When you mentioned about two-phase declarations, are we going to have some kind of preliminary declaration?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, I said it was one of the ideas.  And that’s why, in answer to your question, we had to have some more discussion about whether or not we’re going to try to do this in one big declaration or if there would be a second declaration, as was proposed by one party today.  So we have to discuss that.

QUESTION:  Is the joint text going to specify that disablement and the declaration have to be done by year end, or is it just going to specify what has to be done by year end as part of those two processes?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  It will specify that they are going to be done, those processes are going to be done by year end.  It does not rule out that additional things will be done after year end.  But it will specify that we are going to get some things accomplished by year end.

QUESTION:  When you talk about some discussion of breaking up the declaration into two phases or packages –

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I said that was the opinion of one of the parties, and that was in answer to the question that we have to continue to do some discussion about that.

QUESTION:  Is that referring specifically to breaking up the uranium enrichment issue as a separate declaration?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, it wasn’t in that.

QUESTION:  Would there be two declarations during this round?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, that was just one idea.  I gave this as an example of something that needs to be clearly discussed.

QUESTION:  But if there are two declarations would it be during this meeting?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I don’t know.

QUESTION:  Was that proposed by the North Koreans?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No.

QUESTION:  Yonhap News reported that the North Koreans admitted that they imported 150 tons of [inaudible] from the Russians in Geneva. Can you confirm this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: No, I can not confirm anything that -- Who was it?  Yonhap?  I don’t know.  That is the Korean news agency.  You ought to ask the Korean Government about it.

QUESTION:  Sir, regarding the enrichment -- would that be included in this declaration in the first stage or the second stage?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  First stage.  I think there may only be one stage.  I only referred to the possibility of two as an example of why we needed to have further discussion on the declaration.  So (inaudible), my bet is that it will be one declaration, and of course it has to include the uranium enrichment issue.

QUESTION:  Were there any discussions about scheduling a ministerial meeting?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Good question.  I had a brief discussion about that with the Chinese host, and we would like to do that.  We would like to start looking at dates.  We had some discussion about whether it could be squeezed in at the end of October, which would be after the Chinese Party Congress.  Of course, some other events happened in other parts of the world.  I think we would like to start getting on (inaudible) Ministers’ calendars and see what can be done.  We would hope to maybe make some progress on that this time.

QUESTION:  Did you raise Myanmar with your Chinese counterpart in today’s talks?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  That was raised, but I didn’t do it. My counterpart -- It was done by our Embassy, with similarly-ranked Chinese.  I would check with our Embassy’s public affairs people to see what the response was.

QUESTION: In the joint statement, you mentioned that it was going to specify what has to be done by year end.  Is it safe to say that all the parties agree that disablement is going to be done by year end?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Yes.

QUESTION:  Including North Korea?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  All means all.

QUESTION:  Do you think the technical details of disablement will be written in the document?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We have some discussion about that, and probably not -- because we might make revisions to those technical details.  So we probably will not spell them all out in the document, in the main Six-Party document.  That is still under discussion -- to what extent we will put elements like that in the document.  But they will have to be written down somewhere. That’s for sure.

QUESTION:  Are you saying that more expert discussion will be necessary for the disablement even after this meeting?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think what we are doing here is -- largely on the basis of the experts who were in Yongbyon -- is to agree on disablement and agree on how disablement is defined and, in particular, what specific actions need to be taken.  Your question was, are there specific actions?  Do we envision those being in the joint statement?  And probably not.  But something will need to be in the joint statement, obviously.  But as for the specific technical actions probably, we won’t try to put those in the joint statement.

QUESTION:  What about enrichment and disablement? How long will it take after?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I have some specific ideas of how long it should take.  For example, in ’02 -- when they brought up the reactor which hadn’t been working for six years -- there was no disablement, and they were able to bring it up in two months.  So clearly we want a situation where it is much more difficult to bring it back on line than just two months.  I have some very specific ideas on that, and we will see whether we have an agreement on that tomorrow.  I think that can be worked out.

 QUESTION:  When it comes to plutonium stockpile declaration, have you and the North Koreans reached an understanding about how much detail has to be in that?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  All the plutonium does need to be, the weapons-grade plutonium -- that is, the plutonium already produced -- would have to be included in the declaration.  I don’t think that is under dispute from any corner.

QUESTION:  How much detail in terms of location, history?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  The detail on location and things like that has not yet been worked out.  The detail of how much plutonium has to be eventually abandoned as part of the final denuclearization, that has to be spelled out.  So if it is 50 kilos, we have to know that it is 50 kilos.

QUESTION:  But this also includes ballistic missiles?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  A ballistic missile without plutonium is a ballistic missile.  So this is not a missile deal.  Frankly speaking though, we would like to eventually get to a missile deal as well.

QUESTION:  The U.S. Government announced the new round of sanctions to the North Korea.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Those are long-standing, Congressionally-mandated, legally-mandated measures.  So they should not have come as any surprise to the North Koreans.

QUESTION:  Is there any reaction from North Korea?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No.  They are long-standing things that were being done.  So they were not a surprise to anybody.

QUESTION:  As part of the document, do you expect that on the declaration you’ll have a specific date of when that is going to have to be released?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think so.  We’re looking at the end of the year -- which is, some people would argue, is kind of an artificial time-frame.  But we’d like to make sure that we get through disablement by the end of the year, so that in ‘08 we can be looking at dismantlement and abandonment of weapons.  So, in terms of trying to keep this on schedule, we really ought to try to have disablement done by the end of the year.  And I think we have agreement to do that.

QUESTION:  Regarding the enrichment program did you find any change in the North Korean’s attitude?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, we had a good discussion again.

QUESTION: Just before the plenary session Kim Gye-gwan handed a paper, a sheet of paper to you.  We saw it in a picture.  Is it for –

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  He handed me a piece of paper?

QUESTION:  Yes, a sheet of paper.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Where?

QUESTION:  At the -- just before the plenary session.  We had cameras there.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, he didn’t give me a piece of paper.  He came over and talked to me.  Is that what you’re referring to?

QUESTION:  Yes.  Did he hand you --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, he didn’t give me a piece of paper.

QUESTION:  I saw a report about two pieces of paper.  [Laughter]

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’ll tell you what that was.  Because we were all charged with reporting on our working groups, so when you have bilateral working groups in theory you should have both sides reporting.  But what we agreed on – I had a piece of paper with me, and we agreed that I would just give the report on how our bilateral meeting went.  And if there were any disagreements or additions or anything else, then he would also give a report.  And as it was, when the Chairman called on me I went through my report and then he called on Mr. Kim Gye-gwan.  And he said that the report I gave was accurate.  So it was just a discussion about the reports, but I don’t think there was any piece of paper.  Were you spying on us?  [Laughter]

QUESTION:  Nothing to do with a joint text?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, nothing to do with a joint statement, a joint text, which we anticipate being circulated tomorrow.  But I really don’t remember any piece of paper.  I’ll think about it, and I’ll let you know.  But I don’t think there was anything.

QUESTION:  Your schedule for the rest of the evening as well as when you expect --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’m going up to my room and get on a pair of blue jeans and then make a lot of telephone calls and stuff like that.

QUESTION:  Do you plan to go to the Embassy after this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’ve got a lot of people working at the Embassy, so maybe when I feel guilty I’ll get over there.  But if you don’t mind this will be the last press event for today.

QUESTION:  Any schedule for tomorrow?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think 9 o’clock we have our head of delegation meeting and probably will be discussing these issues as we discussed here.  So 9 o’clock head of delegation.  I’ll probably leave here around 8 o’clock.

QUESTION:  Ambassador Hill, one bite.  Can tell us about the progress of today’s talks?  I’m sorry, we’re late.  Reuters.  I’m sorry.  One bite.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Let me put it to a vote among the rest of the journalists whether I should repeat everything because you’re late.

QUESTION:  I’m sorry, just one quick bite.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We had a very full set of meetings today, a lot of bilateral meetings, followed by a plenary session.  We heard reports from all the working groups, and I think tomorrow we’ll focus on the text of the joint atatement so that we can begin to have an agreement on the overall meeting.

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