Top US diplomat says 'slugfests' bearing results

Washington: President-elect Barack Obama will be confronted during his first days in office with stalled disarmament talks involving a recalcitrant North Korea that holds a stash of weapons-grade plutonium.

In an interview on Wednesday, however, the top US diplomat for Asia said the Bush administration's hard-fought diplomacy with the North in six-nation nuclear talks - "slugfests," Christopher Hill called them - has made progress, pressuring Pyongyang to shut down its plutonium production.

"We still have a country that has not given up its nuclear ambitions," Hill, an assistant secretary of state, said in his office at the State Department.

"What you strive for in diplomacy, though, is to try to make sure that you're handing over problems rather than crises. We have a very definite problem, ... but it's a problem that we have a framework for dealing with, and we need to keep at it."

Critics contend that the North never will give up what it sees as a nuclear trump card but wants only to win concessions in a series of endless talks that keep Pyongyang a major international focus.