RUSSIA: Russia pledged yesterday to work to ensure everyone stayed at the table at six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear crisis in Beijing this week but said chances of a deal were "very poor".
Emotional protests in Japan and South Korea for and against North Korea's reclusive communist regime illustrated the chasm negotiators face as they gather for three days of talks aimed at ending the 10-month standoff.
"The chances of reaching agreement in this present round of negotiations in Beijing are, unfortunately, very poor," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Alexander Losyukov said.
"We will strive to propel the talks to go on," Mr Losyukov, who is heading the Russian delegation to the talks, added.
Diplomats from the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia meet at the exclusive Diaoyutai state guest house from tomorrow to Friday.
US Assistant Secretary of State Mr James Kelly arrived yesterday evening, after the South Korean and Japanese negotiators.
"We'll be getting going on Wednesday morning and we're looking forward to a direct and fair exchange of views," Mr Kelly told reporters.
A South Korean official said in Beijing that Japan, the United States and the South would meet for a planning session this morning.
Pyongyang's delegation, headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Kim Yong-il, was set to arrive today.
All sides were expected to lay out their positions, but hopes of any breakthrough were tempered by the failure of negotiations in April between the United States, North Korea and China, and Pyongyang's penchant for brinkmanship.
"North Korea will always take a tough stand - we don't expect anything less," said a foreign diplomat in Beijing with knowledge of preparations for the talks. "And that's one reason why we don't have high expectations of concrete results." The United States said in October that North Korea had admitted to a clandestine programme to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons, which violated its agreements with the United States and international commitments.
Since then, Pyongyang has thrown out UN nuclear inspectors, become the first state to pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted its Yongbyon nuclear plant, sparking fears it may have reprocessed spent fuel rods there into plutonium for weapons.
In some trademark last-minute posturing, North Korea accused the United States of giving up on the talks before they had started, citing what it said was talk in Washington of taking the matter to the UN Security Council.
If the United States tried such a move, "the six-way talks would be nothing but an exchange of high words and that will throw a darker shadow on the prospect of solution" to the crisis, the ruling party's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.
In a sign of the emotion underscoring the gulf between the countries, raucous protests greeted the arrival in Japan of a North Korean ferry that has stirred anger about Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Mangyongbong-92, the only direct passenger link between Japan and North Korea, arrived in the port of Niigata yesterday for the first time in seven months. Many Japanese oppose the ship's visits because of allegations it has been used for spying and smuggling missile parts.
"Give us back the abducted children and families!" chanted more than 100 protesters, including relatives of people who were snatched by North Korean agents decades ago to train spies.
"Go home! Go home!" some of the protesters shouted.
In South Korea, small but violent scuffles between North Korean journalists and South Korean protesters overshadowed the world university games on Sunday and prompted a threatened pull-out by Pyongyang.