US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said Tuesday this week's North Korea nuclear disarmament talks would focus on ways to verify a recent declaration of its atomic activities.
China announced talks would resume on Thursday in Beijing after a lengthy break, expressing confidence that the drive to end North Korea's nuclear programmes would pick up momentum.
"The verification is the most important thing. We want to speed up the rate of disablement (of its nuclear activities)," Hill said in Beijing after holding talks with his North Korean counterpart before the official start of the meet.
"Verification will probably take longer than just a few days, it will be weeks, and maybe months," he told reporters.
He also said: "Verification consists of documents, the site visits, the interviews. Obviously details have to be worked out."
China is the host of the six-nation talks, which began in 2003 with the aim of convincing the North to abandon its nuclear activities.
The talks had not been held for nine months amid delays in securing from the reclusive North Korean regime a declaration of its nuclear activities as agreed in a landmark six-nation deal reached last year.
However North Korea, which conducted an atomic test in 2006, last month finally delivered the declaration, clearing the way for progress in the tortuous negotiations.
Hill said he was hopeful that the talks -- which involve the United States, China, Russia, the two Koreas and Japan -- would also address phase three of the deal.
Under the current second phase of the deal, the North should get energy aid equal to one million tons of fuel oil and the lifting of some US sanctions, in return for disabling its Yongbyon reactor and documenting its activities.
The third and final phase of the deal calls for the North to permanently dismantle its atomic plants and hand over all nuclear material and weaponry.
