Evening Walk-Through, St. Regis Hotel, Beijing, China -- September 28, 2007

QUESTION:  Ambassador, were you able to narrow your differences with North Korea on disablement and denuclearization?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  First of all, we had a lot of discussions today.  We began with a Six Party head of delegation.  The members of the team that had gone into the DPRK a couple of weeks ago to look at the issues of scope of declaration, scope of the disablement rather, reported to the group.  We had bilateral meetings through the day.  I had a fairly lengthy one with the DPRK but also had them with other delegations as well.

I think we have looked at the way forward, about how we can get on with the task of disabling.  We had a lot of discussions that we had not had before -- but discussions about what a declaration would look like and when we might first see a declaration from the DPRK.  So they gave us a date when we could begin to see a declaration, and we discussed what we might see in the declaration.  

So, all in all, it was a kind of nuts and bolts, a lot of very specific discussions.  I think, in talking with the Chinese late this afternoon, they had taken in a lot of comments from various delegations.  I don’t think we are quite prepared to try to put together a joint draft or a joint statement.  So we’ll see if they want to do that tomorrow.  We’ll see.

For me it was a very useful day, because we were able to discuss some real specifics, both in the scope of declaration but also importantly we began to discuss the scope of disablement.  And then we were able to discuss some of the declaration.

QUESTION:  Yesterday you said that you were hoping to circulate a joint statement by the end of today, but you haven’t.  And you are saying you don’t think it is going to come through?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, I said we were expecting to see a joint statement from the Chinese.  We didn’t see it today.  It might come tomorrow.  Or we might not go with a joint statement.  Often when you have a joint statement you spend a lot of time trying to figure out, trying to get it cleared by six parties.  I think what we need to develop, have a road map ahead.  And we were discussing elements of what that road map would look like.

QUESTION:  So is this a setback?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No.  It’s just a -- We were discussing what the roadmap looks like and whether we do it with a joint statement or not.  I think what is important is, we need to know what the road ahead is and what we are going to try to do a week from now, two weeks from now, things like that.

QUESTION:  Ambassador Hill, when you met with the North Koreans today did they mention getting off the United States’ list of terrorism?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  They certainly raised that as a key concern of theirs.  It has been, and we discussed what would have to happen.

QUESTION:  So has your stance changed from back in Geneva?  It seems there was an agreement in place at the time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’m sorry?

QUESTION:  It seems there was an agreement in place at the time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, we discussed some of the specifics of how that would work.  So, no, there hasn’t been any change.

QUESTION:  Did you discuss the timing of when you’d probably get off?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We discussed timing issues. We did.

QUESTION:  Ambassador Hill, one of the key objectives of coming here was trying to put together a February-style agreement, and now you are saying that may not happen at these talks.  How can we say that things are moving forward if they are not going to be able to present anything?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  First of all, it is too soon to say how we are going to have a roadmap-- whether it is a joint statement or otherwise.  This was the first time we were all together after a number of weeks and after a number of technical discussions.  We are into a stage of this process that is beyond anything that has been done before.  This is the first time that we have been talking about how to disable their programs and how to get a complete declaration.  This is a new stage; it has not been done before. It was never done in the 1990’s.  Throughout the Agreed Framework, it never got to disablement.  Obviously we are taking some time at it.

We had to discuss a lot of issues pertaining to what kind of team goes in there to do the disablement, who is going to lead the disablement, is it a Six-Party process, how do we do things like that.  We had a lot of nuts and bolts discussions today, and I don’t think that it has all been -- It went fairly late.  I had to get going, because I had to start making some calls to Washington.  I think the Chinese are probably trying to put together all the comments and figure out how we capture these conversations and get on with this next phase.

QUESTION: Ambassador, the question of energy had been coming up as well in the past.  You’ve mentioned the question of timing and nature of the delay.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  That’s another issue that’s full of a lot of nuts and bolts.  There are a lot of details in that.  I think the thought was we would pick up on that in the morning, on Saturday morning, and discuss energy aid.  There was some discussion of it in the morning head of delegation meeting, but we expect tomorrow morning to be devoted to the energy matters.  Yesterday we had the working groups report, and the South Koreans -- who are in charge of the energy -- gave a report.  But we haven’t really had a full discussion about it.  That should be tomorrow morning.  

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  One more question.  

QUESTION:  Ambassador, if the DPRK fulfills its responsibility until the end of this year, do you feel any possibility for USA not to be able to take severe action, like take DPRK out of the [inaudible]?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’m sorry.  Whatever we are going to do, we’ll do.  We have to have a good agreement on precisely what we’re going to do, and then how to deal with that with all our processes.  We had some discussions with the DPRK about various issues pertaining to our bilateral relationship in Geneva.  And, as I said earlier, what we agreed to do in Geneva we will fulfill.  We have a ways to go.

QUESTION:  Do you think you need a new round of talks before we have ministerial meetings?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I don’t think we do need another round, because I think we’ve made a lot of progress in discussing a lot of very technical complex issues here.  So I think we will be ready to go to the ministerial, subject to the schedules of the ministers, which we hope will be at the end of October.

QUESTION:  Do you still rule out a two-phase declaration?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I don’t think it’ll be a two-phase declaration.  I think what it will be, they will come forward with an initial draft and then it will go back.  And we will have a sort of process that goes back and forth, leading to a final declaration by the end of the year.  I think that is kind of what we have in mind.

QUESTION:  Ambassador Hill just a point of clarification: you said that the North Koreans gave you a date when you could expect a declaration.  Could you share that with us?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, but they did.  I can’t share everything with you, because that would take all the fun out of it.

QUESTION:  When you say you may not have a joint declaration, does that mean that you may not have anything on paper by the end of this round?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, I can’t speak for the Chinese on that.  But I think we would have something on paper, yes.  I think we would have to have something on paper.  We usually do.  Because in doing a roadmap, we would want the roadmap to be something everyone understands.

QUESTION:  But it might not be the roadmap that you envisioned.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, why don’t we hold off and see what it looks like tomorrow?  It’s the Chinese responsibility to figure out how to capture the session on a piece of paper.  So whether they want to do a joint statement as we had in mind or whether they want to do something else is kind of up to them.  It’s not a big deal for us.  What’s a big deal for us is we need to know what we’re going to do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.  We need to know what the coming days, weeks and months are going to look like, because there’s not a lot of time.

QUESTION:  So, just to summarize, today there was no draft that was circulated.  The meeting was only ten minutes, the plenary session?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Well, in the morning – What do you mean?  It was much longer than that.

QUESTION:  This afternoon, the one that started --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  That was just the closing plenary.

QUESTION:  So no draft was circulated; basically, you’re still bogged down by figuring out details.  For example, a --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Are you writing a story for me, or asking a question?  We had a long session this morning, a very long plenary session.  Then I had a very long bilateral session and several bilateral sessions.  So it was a pretty busy day, and we’re dealing with a lot of pretty complex and technical matters.  So I’m sorry I can’t confirm your story for you.  Have you already written it or something?

QUESTION:  Is there one obstacle now, that’s keeping --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, there’s no one obstacle.  We’re looking at scope of disablement; we’re looking at how big the declaration needs to be.  It’s supposed to be all nuclear programs.  So we want to make sure we get all nuclear programs.  At the same time, the disablement is something we’re talking about, at this stage, in Yongbyon.  So we’re going to have another disablement stage.  We have to look at all those questions.  It’s not easy, and the reason it’s not easy is it’s never been done before.  It’s terra incognita.  That’s Latin for “unknown land.”

QUESTION:  What happened for you to change your comment about there being a joint declaration, or a draft declaration?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:   I’m sorry, you were both singing together.  I couldn’t quite get it.

QUESTION:  What happened today that made you become more ambiguous about the fact that there could be --

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Just that it was taking us a lot of time to get through a lot of nuts and bolts, and by the end of the day the Chinese had not circulated a draft.  

QUESTION:   The date the North Koreans gave you for the declaration; can you at least confirm the date is by the end of this year?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Oh yes, before that.  Yes, much before that.  That’s what was interesting about it.  

OK?  I really have to go.

QUESTION:  Schedule for tonight and tomorrow?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I just want to go upstairs and get into a pair of blue jeans.

QUESTION   And tomorrow?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Get out of my blue jeans, get back into a suit, and I think the way the Chinese usually do it is we’ll have a Six-Party meeting (inaudible) early in the morning.  And then we’ll just take it from there.  I don’t know whether we’re into one more day or two more days.  It’s up to the Chinese hosts.  When we tried to reach them tonight to find out in anticipation of your question, we called them and they were all having meetings -- I think probably to answer your question.  

All right? See you all later.  Bye Bye.