SINGAPORE, July 23 (RIA Novosti) - The foreign ministers of the six countries involved in negotiations on North Korea's nuclear disarmament held a meeting in Singapore on Wednesday.
The ministers' meeting took place on the sidelines of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) forum.
This was the first time that the six countries involved in the talks - Russia, the United States, China, Japan and the two Koreas - had sent their top diplomats to the negotiations, which have been going on since 2003.
The latest round of talks on North Korea was held on July 10-12 in Beijing. The negotiations were given a boost by Pyongyang's agreement to scrap its nuclear reactors by the end of October, and to allow foreign experts to visit facilities to verify information released by the communist state on its past nuclear activities.
North Korea insists it has met its denuclearization commitments in full, and is demanding that the United States end its "hostile policies".
The six nations are still to agree on a mechanism to verify last month's declaration by Pyongyang on its weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the talks on Wednesday.
"We have agreed that our next step will be to prepare a declaration on measures to verify Pyongyang's statements on its nuclear program," Lavrov said.
A draft agreement on verification has been drawn up and a deal on the issue could be reached by mid-August, chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said, as quoted by Reuters.
