North Korea to be pressed on checking nuclear claims

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Five regional powers will press North Korea into allowing them to check the account it has given of its plutonium production when sputtering disarmament talks open in Beijing on Thursday for the first time in nine months.

The talks have made historic progress, with the North taking the first steps to dismantle facilities that make bomb-grade fissile material.

But the meetings have yet to produce answers on the secretive state's nuclear weaponry, uranium enrichment plans and whether it proliferated technology to the likes of Syria.

The talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States are scheduled to run for three days and several of those countries' nuclear envoys have already arrived in Beijing for meetings ahead of the formal discussions.

Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy, told reporters on Tuesday this round of talks would focus on verifying North Korea's declaration on its nuclear activities.

"Our hope is to produce a verification regime that will lay out the rules for the road," he told reporters in Beijing.

In late June, the North presented a long-delayed account of its nuclear weapons programme that contained information on its plutonium production, but did little to address U.S. suspicions of a secret uranium enrichment programme.

Washington responded by starting to take the state off of its terrorism blacklist, which will remove sanctions that have made it almost impossible for Pyongyang to access international finance.