IN A rare meeting between old enemies, top diplomats from the United States and North Korea held talks in Beijing yesterday, paving the way for long-delayed six-party negotiations on ending the North’s nuclear programme.

Officials from the communist state agreed to meet after President Bush began to refer to their leader as “Mr Kim Jong Il”, instead of using terms such as “pygmy”.

US officials said the aim was to get to know each other better, although they may also have been spurred on by the worsening situation on the Korean peninsula. The International Atomic Energy Agency has called it the world’s most dangerous proliferation issue.

Negotiators from the two protagonists, as well as China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, sit down in the Chinese capital today for a fourth round of talks.

Christopher Hill, the US Assistant Secretary of State, said of yesterday’s meeting: “I want to stress these are not negotiations. We’re just trying to get acquainted, to review how we see things coming up and compare notes.”

Mr Hill last met Kim Kye Gwan, the North Korean negotiator, on July 9 in Beijing for a dinner at which they agreed to resume the stalled talks.

The three previous rounds ended without progress and few expect a breakthrough this time. Still, the prospect of a meeting between Washington and Pyongyang, and faint progress at meetings between the two Koreas at the weekend, provided a more buoyant atmosphere for the first round of talks in nearly a year. During the three previous rounds, US envoys avoided a formal bilateral meeting — despite repeated requests from North Korea — but did hold informal discussions during breaks in the six-way negotiations.

The crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea — branded by Mr Bush as part of an axis of evil alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq — had admitted pursuing a clandestine uranium-based nuclear weapons programme in addition to its already frozen plutonium facilities. The North denied the admission, expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In February it announced that it possessed nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang wants the US to drop its “hostile policy” towards North Korea and has called for economic aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition. The US wants Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear programmes before any such deal, leaving the two sides poles apart. However, there are signs of movement.

On Friday North Korea called for a peace treaty with the US to replace an armistice reached at the end of the Korean War in 1953, saying this could persuade it to drop its nuclear programmes.

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