Envoys to the six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme convened for a third day in Beijing today. The crux of their discussions being ways to procure soil and waste samples from North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor while abiding by North Korea’s rule of not allowing international inspectors to the site. The samples procured will determine how much weapons-grade plutonium is produced in Yongbyon.

The talks through which the six nations have been unable to reach a consensus for five years now aim at agreeing on a process to satisfy all sides that Pyongyang is fully complying with a multilateral disarmament-for-aid deal signed early last year. North Korea — which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006 — agreed last year to disable its main reactor in exchange for aid. Last October U.S. officials also said that North Korea had agreed to allow experts to take samples and conduct forensic tests at all of its declared nuclear facilities and undeclared sites.

But Pyongyang said last month it agreed only to letting nuclear inspectors visit its main atomic complex, view related documents and interview scientists, but would not allow outside inspectors to take samples from the complex.

Host nation China has taken the lead by submitting a document peppered with suggestions from the other five nations to help dissolve the dead lock. Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the negotiations, would not say what was in the four-page document, but said it included sections on sampling and visits as part of a verification plan.

“We need a verification process that’s clear and that does not leave ambiguity, and that certainly, I think, is what the draft tries to address and what we tried to address in our comments,” he told The Associated Press.

Any progress at the negotiations in Beijing, which have stretched over the years with very little to show, would be considered a diplomatic trophy for outgoing American President Bush and warming of relations between North and South Korea and Pyongyang and Tokyo over the kidnapping of Japanese nationals decades ago.