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U.S.

Powell confers with North Korean minister

Brief discussion held at Asian security conference


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JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met with his North Korean counterpart Friday in Indonesia on the sidelines of an Asian security conference to discuss an offer to end Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Powell set aside time to meet with Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun for about 20 minutes, telling the North Korean official an opportunity exists for concrete progress on the nuclear issue.

The two met less formally in 2002, also at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference, chatting over coffee for about 15 minutes.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Friday's meeting a "conversation" in which the two discussed proposals they had put forth at last week's third round of talks on the nuclear issue in Beijing.

A senior State Department official said Powell emphasized a U.S. plan aimed at moving forward on dismantling the North Korean nuclear program and saw the meeting "as an opportunity for progress."

Speaking to the press, Powell said the purpose of the meeting was to clarify each country's position.

He added he shared the information with other parties involved in the conversations over the North Korean nuclear deadlock. They include China, which hosts the negotiations, plus Japan, Russia and South Korea.

After the Beijing talks, the six nations agreed to hold a fourth round of talks by the end of September. Working-level talks will be held before then.

North Korean Foreign Ministry official Chung Song-il said that "both sides agreed in principle to establish trust, which we are lacking. We agreed to that in principle, so the atmosphere at the meeting was good."

He said the United States agrees "in principle with North Korea's proposal of a simultaneous solution."

"Practically, to solve the nuclear problem, we should establish trust, and at the end of the six-way talks we agreed to study more about the proposals," he said, "and that is why we will see the U.S. response in September when we get together again."

But the United States has said that North Korea must take concrete steps toward dismantling its program before it would offer a security guarantee.

The United States proposes that North Korea end its nuclear program and allow international monitors to return in exchange for energy aid and a provisional American security guarantee.

Under the plan, North Korea would provide a full declaration of its nuclear activities and cease all of them; secure any fissile material that could be used to produce a nuclear bomb; disable any dangerous materials; and allow inspectors to return.

In exchange, the other countries in the talks would provide Pyongyang with badly needed heavy fuel oil, and the United States would offer a "provisional" guarantee not to attack North Korea, officials said.

North Korea has yet to respond to the U.S. offer.

CNN's Elise Labott and Maria Ressa contributed to this report.


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