The heads of delegations for the six-party talks will meet Monday evening for the first time since they arrived in Beijing to seek ways to resolve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.??

According to a Chinese notice posted in the press center of the talks, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will hold a banquet at 18:30 to welcome the delegations from the US, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea.

 

All the delegation heads will attend the banquet, according to reliable sources.

 

After their arrival since Friday, the delegations have held a series of bilateral meetings. At one of the meetings, the North and South Korean delegations reached a consensus on Sunday that a framework should be set up to realize a nuclear-weapon-free Korean Peninsula.

 

After more than a year's of holdup, the six parties, China, the US, Russia, Japan, North and South Korea, will resume the talks, the fourth round of its kind, tomorrow morning. They did not set a time for the end of this round.

 

Christopher Hill, head of the US delegation and US assistant secretary of state, said when he arrived in Beijing Sunday that the US is "very much committed" to the upcoming six-party talks, and he "wouldn't expect this to be the last set of negotiation."

 

North Korea on Sunday urged the US to approach the new round of the talks with a sincere and sound stance.

 

"The new round of six-party talks should be made to contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. It is hard to expect the solution to the nuclear issue without active and sincere efforts from the US," the Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a signed article.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2005)