With jitters eased, talks in Beijing seen set to go

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With jitters eased, talks in Beijing seen set to go

All signs point to proposed three-way talks on North Korea’s nuclear program going ahead as scheduled on Wednesday in Beijing.
Officials in Seoul all but confirmed the starting date for the United States, North Korea and China to begin the process of resolving the North Korean nuclear problem. U.S. officials said Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was to depart for Beijing yesterday.
Officials in Seoul and Washington showed relief that the talks appear to be on track. There were some serious jitters over the weekend that the hard-won agreement to meet in the Chinese capital would be abrogated ― first by the North Koreans after the agreement was disclosed last week, and then by the Americans after Pyeongyang appeared to say on Friday, in language that took studied ambiguity to new heights, that it was reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods.
Pyeongyang itself helped with the improving mood, providing a new English version of its announcement. It is “successfully going forward to reprocess” the fuel rods, the North’s Foreign Ministry spokesman in said a revised transcript carried by the Central News Agency yesterday.
That confirmed what officials here and in Washington had suspected when they looked at the discrepancy between the earlier English statement and the Korean one. In English, the original said, “We are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase,” while the Korean text could have been taken to mean that they were about to do so.
South Korea’s deputy foreign minister, Lee Soo-hyuck, back from consultations with U.S. and Japanese officials, said yesterday that the talks should begin Wednesday. Even before the revised statement on reprocessing by the North was available, Mr. Lee said the three officials who met in Washington had concluded that the talks should go forward in any case. But the statement had left the U.S. Defense Department unhappy, Mr. Lee said.
The New York Times reported yesterday the circulation of a confidential memo drawn up by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before work started on setting up the Beijing talks, in which he pressed for diplomatic efforts with China for the removal of Kim Jong-il from the North’s regime. The report spoke of possible conflicts within the U.S. administration in the approach to North Korea. But, whatever differences may have existed, President George W. Bush expressed optimism for the talks on Sunday, saying there was “a good chance of convincing North Korea to abandon her ambitions to develop nuclear arsenals.”
In Seoul, the senior Blue House aide for foreign affairs, Ban Ki-moon, said early yesterday that the talks would be going forward. He also said the identity of the top North Korean delegate has been confirmed, but he would not disclose it. Diplomatic sources point to Ri Gun, a former deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Lee, the South’s deputy foreign minister, is likely to be conspicuously absent from Beijing on Wednesday, when North Koreans sit down with Mr. Kelly and his delegates and the Chinese vice foreign minister Wang Yi. The meeting, expected to extend over three days ― more to discuss the agenda of further talks than to deal with substantive issues ― will likely be kept under a tight lid. North Korea and China have asked that no information be made public. Neither is the progress of the talks likely to be made available to South Korea, which for that reason will keep Mr. Lee in Seoul.
Mr. Lee said the key U.S. agenda item for the talks is to have them expanded to include South Korea and Japan as soon as possible. This is an initiative of Washington, Mr. Lee said, not Seoul’s aspiration alone.
That Seoul should part of any discussions to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem has been no small part of President Roh Moo-hyun’s policy, both before and after his election in December.


by Kim Young-sae
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