North Korea has said it may be willing to give up its nuclear weapons as fresh six-nation talks began amid warnings that four years of tough diplomacy on Pyongyang was at a crossroads.
Four months after North Korea conducted its first atomic test, the isolated nation's chief atomic envoy said disarming was a possibility, but that the onus rested with the United States.
Kim Kye-Gwan said he was prepared to talk about reviving a deal made in September 2005, under which North Korea would scrap its nuclear programme in return for aid, energy benefits and security guarantees.
Kim said: 'We are ready to discuss the initial steps, but whether the US will give up its hostile policy against us and come out for mutual peaceful co-existence will be the basis for our judgement.'
'There are still lots of contentious points yet to be settled. It depends on how we settle those contentious points. We'll have to wait and see.'
At the end of the first day, chief US negotiator Christopher Hill called it a 'great meeting'.
Hill added: 'We had a good first day today. The Chinese are, as always, working very hard to turn this around into a draft of a joint statement.
'We hope we can achieve some kind of joint statement here and we have to see if we actually get that. We are moving on a path with a clear sign that there is a clear political will.'
Speaking at a meeting in Congress, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was cautiously optimistic that it may be possible to begin carrying out the 2005 deal.
The 2005 deal fell apart only two months after it was signed amid North Korean protests over unrelated US sanctions imposed against it for alleged money laundering and counterfeiting.
China is the host of the six-way talks, which began in 2003 with the initial aim of getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
The stakes were raised after North Korea's atomic test in October last year, and the forum now hopes to convince the Stalinist regime to disarm entirely.
As well as China, North Korea and the US, other countries in the process are Japan, Russia and South Korea.
No timeframe has been released for this round of talks, although delegates have said they expect it to last at least two or three days.
