Negotiations aimed at closing down North Korea's nuclear programme resumed today in a rare atmosphere of optimism, with both sides hinting at the first meaningful progress for more than a year.

As delegates to the Six-Party Talks met in a secluded compound in Beijing, North Korea's nuclear representative, Kim Kye Gwan, said that Pyongyang was "prepared to discuss first-stage measures" for the eventual suspension of its weapons programme.

"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,” said Mr Kim. "“There are still lots of contentious points yet to be settled."

The chief US negotiator, Christopher Hill, denied reports in the Japanese press that America and North Korea had already agreed a series of steps in the face-to-face talks that took place between the two countries in December.

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Quoting diplomatic sources, the Kyodo news agency said today that the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong Il was ready to halt its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and allow weapons inspectors into the country in return for aid and oil imports.

But Mr Hill did say that the current negotiations were aiming to reactivate parts of the last positive agreement with North Korea: made in 2005 when Pyongyang appeared ready to give up its atomic research before storming out of the talks to protest US attempts to disrupt its money laundering.

“I don’t want to tell you what aspects of the September ’05 agreement we’re trying to get implemented, except to say that when we do get a set of actions — if we do — it will be widely seen as a very solid, positive step toward implementation,” he said.

Other delegates from the six countries involved in the talks — China, North Korea, Russia, America, Japan and South Korea — conceded that little progress had been made over the course of three interrupted years of meetings but said that a breakthrough could now be within reach.

“So far the denuclearisation of North Korea has been mostly talk versus talk. Now it’s time to enter the stage of actions versus actions,” said South Korea's representative, Chun Yung-woo, who added that the negotiations were at an “important crossroads".

At the opening of the talks, the Chinese envoy, Wu Dawei, said he expected the recent contact between Washington and Pyongyang to provide “a more solid basis for this session" after the last round of negotiations, which fizzled out after North Korea presented what was described as a shopping list of demands from the international community.

The Six-Party Talks began in 2003 after North Korea defied previous agreements with the Clinton Administration and was caught enriching uranium in 2002. The 2005 accord lasted only a few weeks before it was abandoned by Pyongyang because of US attempts to clamp down on the regime's money laundering and counterfeit activities in Macau.

Since then relations between Pyongyang and the rest of the world have worsened, reaching their nadir with the detonation of North Korea's first nuclear bomb last October and the swathe of condemnations and UN sanctions that followed. The US remains adamant that measures to stop Pyongyang counterfeiting money, making drugs, trading weapons or importing luxury goods must stay in place until the country agrees to give up its nuclear ambitions.

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