North Korea said on Friday it had reached a “certain agreement” with the United States in nuclear talks in Berlin, and praised the rare direct dialogue between the two bitter foes. US envoy Christopher Hill and the North’s Kim Kye-gwan ended three days of unprecedented discussions in the German capital on Thursday, giving no sign of any breakthrough in the dispute over the communist state’s nuclear weapons programme. In a statement on Friday, Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said: “The talks took place from Jan. 16 to 18 in a positive and sincere atmosphere and a certain agreement was reached there.” “We paid attention to the direct dialogue held by the DPRK (North Korea) and the US in a bid to settle knotty problems in resolving the nuclear issue,” the official KCNA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying. But Hill, arriving in South Korea to brief officials in Seoul, appeared puzzled by the reference to a deal.
“I’m sorry, I’m not really sure what he’s referring to,” Hill told reporters, but added: “We had very useful discussions.”
“I want to emphasise once again that the negotiations for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula take place at the six-party talks,” Hill told reporters. “But we’ve always felt it useful to have discussions between rounds of six-party talks.”