The United States has offered a proposal to try to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis at six-party talks in Beijing while an entrenched Pyongyang urged Washington to soften its stance.
Chief negotiators from the six parties opened discussions on Wednesday on the 20-month nuclear crisis at the exclusive Diaoyutai State Guesthouse as Japan warned that the credibility of the talks would be on the line if no progress was made.
Progress in two previous rounds has been glacial, and few expect major breakthroughs despite the US proposal, which the New York Times said contained incentives for the North to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.
"We are prepared for serious discussion and we have a proposal to offer," US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said in an opening statement.
"A focus on the common objective, and practical and effective means to attain it, will lead in a very positive direction with new political, economic and diplomatic possibilities," he said.
Kelly gave no details.
The two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China have held two previous rounds of senior-level talks on the 20-month crisis, both of which ended inconclusively.
The New York Times said in today's edition US negotiators would offer the North new but "highly conditional" incentives to give up its nuclear weapons, including a provisional guarantee not to invade.
The incentives, if offered, would be the first significant, detailed overture to North Korea since President George W. Bush took office more than three years ago and branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq.
Under the proposal, aid would also begin flowing to North Korea once its leader Kim Jong-il made a commitment to dismantle his plutonium and uranium weapons programmes, the newspaper said.
"China, Russia, Japan and South Korea would immediately begin sending thousands of tons of heavy fuel oil every month, and Washington would offer a 'provisional' guarantee not to invade the country or seek to topple Mr Kim's government," it said.
It was unclear how such a proposal would be greeted by the unpredictable North, which unleashed a characteristic barrage of anti-US rhetoric ahead of the talks.
"No positive results can be expected from the third round of the six-party talks if the US again raises its old brigandish demand at the talks that will start today," North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.
North Korea's chief negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, said Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear weapons programme if the United States dropped its "hostile policy" towards the North, a refrain from previous rounds.
In a sign of how far apart Pyongyang and Washington remain, Kim said the United States must first drop its demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its weapons programmes and agree to its own compensation proposal.
The North has demanded security guarantees and economic aid before it will consider scrapping its nuclear weapons programmes. The United States has said the North must agree to abandon its nuclear programmes before it offers any security pledges or aid.