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N. Korea nuclear talks start as South offers compensation

BEIJING - North Korea held a rare private meeting with the United States on Wednesday and also won an offer of compensation from South Korea if it relinquishes its nuclear weapons program - part of a spate of activity on the first day of long-anticipated six-country talks.

The highly unusual meeting came on the sidelines of six-nation talks aimed at ending the standoff over the North's nuclear program.

The talks resumed today with the United States continuing its push for a verifiable end to the North's ambitions of becoming a nuclear power.

On Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State James Kelly spent more than an hour in talks with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. No details were immediately available from either side.

FOOD AID RESUMES: The World Food Program said Wednesday that it has temporarily averted a new hunger crisis in North Korea by borrowing grain from government warehouses, but it warned that a lack of international donations means that many women, children and elderly people are still at risk of malnutrition.

TEHRAN, Iran - Reacting to a report that it had not disclosed all information about its nuclear activities to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, a top Iranian official said Wednesday that Iran was not obliged to reveal all aspects of its program.

Hassan Rowhani, secretary of the powerful Supreme National Security Council, said Iran did not think it was necessary to reveal to the International Atomic Energy Agency the outcome of its research on the production of a P2 centrifuge, an advanced device for enriching uranium.

Rowhani, the official IRNA news agency reported, said Iran had no P2 centrifuges, and said Iran was just conducting research or designing a prototype.

HARD-LINERS CONFIRM VICTORY: Final election results announced by the government on Wednesday confirmed that Iran's religious conservatives won an overwhelming majority of the seats at stake in Friday's parliamentary balloting, even in liberal Tehran, bringing their total to 156 in the 290-seat assembly, the reformist-controlled Interior Ministry announced. Fifty seats will be decided in a second round of voting this year.

QUAKE SURVIVORS PROTEST: Earthquake survivors from Morocco's minority Berber community accused the government of abandoning them Wednesday, a day after a temblor hit their northern region. Nearly 600 people were killed, hundreds more wounded and thousands left homeless.