Under a deal reached by Russia, China, North and South Koreas, the United States and Japan, fuel and economic incentives have been offered to North Korea in exchange for Pyongyang disabling its nuclear facilities, a process recently halted over diplomatic bargaining.
"The agreement that was reached must be implemented, and this also concerns the North Korean side. Work should be done preferably in the six-party format, without looking for a by-pass," Sergei Lavrov said on his way back from a UN Security Council meeting.
Speaking about consultations between parties to the talks, which have been ongoing since 2003, Lavrov said Moscow supported any bilateral contacts that were transparent for other parties.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Friday that Japan, Russia, China, the United States and South Korea had agreed that "future fuel shipments aren't going to move forward absent a verification regime."
"The foreign ministries of both Russia and China have classified attempts to distort the content of the talks as unfair," Lavrov said commenting on McCormack's statement.
Four days of international negotiations in Beijing on North Korea's denuclearization process ended last week in deadlock over Pyongyang's refusal to accept a Chinese-drafted verification protocol on North Korea's past nuclear activities. McCormack linked the signing of the protocol to fuel oil supplies, to Russia's surprise.
Moscow's chief negotiator with the North Koreans, Alexei Borodavkin, said on Saturday that Russia would abide by its commitments on fuel shipments, adding that it would ship its third batch of 50,000 metric tons of fuel oil in December.
Each of the five countries agreed in 2007 to give the North 200,000 metric tons of fuel oil as an incentive for nuclear decommissioning by North Korea and disclosure of all information on past nuclear activities.
