Beijing - US and Chinese officials on Saturday discussed the latest setback in the six-nation process to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, but Pyongyang's envoy reportedly failed to arrive in Beijing. US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met China's chief envoy in the nuclear talks, Wu Dawei, after saying late Friday that his key concern was the verification mechanism for the dismantling of the nuclear programme.
North Korea last month threatened to resume work on its nuclear programme because the United States had failed to remove it from a list of states linked to terrorism, which it agreed to do in return for steps by North Korea to end its nuclear programme.
But US officials have said North Korea must do more first to meet its own obligations under a six-nation agreement between the two nations and China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
"I think obviously we need to get from the North Koreans the means by which we are going to verify the declaration," South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Hill as saying on Saturday.
"Then we'll be prepared immediately to delist them from the terrorism list, which was our agreement," he said.
Hill said he had no plans to meet North Korean officials in Beijing, but added that the United States was "certainly prepared to sit down in six-party meetings again or directly with the North Koreans to hear their concerns about the (verification) protocol".
Yonhap quoted an unidentified South Korean diplomat as saying North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, did not arrive in Beijing as hoped.
"It was already expected that Deputy Foreign Minister Kim would not visit China," the South Korean diplomat said.
"It appears that Kim has concluded that he would gain little from the negotiations, with his country havin
