By BARRY SCHWEID
The Associated Press
Saturday, December 3, 2005; 10:21 AM

WASHINGTON -- American negotiator Christopher Hill is signaling North Korea there are limits to U.S. patience in trying to reach an agreement to end the insular regime's nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic benefits and security assurances.

"I don't want to threaten walkout," Hill told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "But I do have to see progress."

Hill said the impoverished country could face a bright future if it would only agree to a monitored halt to enriching plutonium and other aspects of an acknowledged nuclear weapons program.

"If they get rid of their weapons we can start opening the country," he said. "And being Korean people they are going to be successful."

But after more than two years of six-nation negotiations, and an apparent breakthrough in September, talks have been sidetracked.

Hill said he assumed bargaining would begin again around January, and that preliminary meetings might be held in South Korea, one of the six countries engaged in the talks. Besides the United States and North Korea, they are China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Hill said he was hoping for a windup within months, not years.

"We can't just sit there stalemated session after stalemated session," he said.

Stressing the importance of denuclearizing North Korea, Hill, an assistant secretary of state, registered limited patience with Pyongyang in a 45-minute interview.

"If there is a value to the talks we will keep on talking," he said. Yet, he added, "We need to see progress."

The United States and its partners have offered North Korea economic incentives in exchange for halting its development of nuclear weapons. In an effort to calm the government in Pyongyang, the Bush administration also has offered assurances it would not be attacked.

Since September, North Korea has toughened its rhetoric while demanding it be provided with a civilian nuclear reactor if it gave up developing nuclear weapons.

Hill said North Korea had been promised only consideration of its request, but he said it first would have to scrap its nuclear weapons programs.

The U.S. negotiator said he would be willing to go to Pyongyang "in the right circumstances if it would further progress." But he said he was not "interested in making gestures. We are interested in making progress."

"I just think it is a very difficult process," he said.

In recent days, in a torrent of hostile rhetoric, North Korea has railed against U.S. financial sanctions and accused Hill of questioning even North Korea's right to exist.

Hill shrugged off the invective in the AP interview.

"They seem to want to talk about everything" but ending their weapons programs and renewing legal commitments to international inspection, he said.