Progress on North-U.S. talks

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Progress on North-U.S. talks

Pyeongyang and Washington have, by most accounts, already passed the first hurdle to sitting down at a negotiating table to talk about how North Korea can abandon its nuclear program and reap rewards from the international community for doing so.
Washington has all but backed down from its declaration that any future talks on the North Korean nuclear issue would have to include South Korea and Japan. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday that Washington has “not ruled out the formula that was used in Beijing,” referring to talks in April among North Korea, the United States and China.
Three makes it multilateral, Boucher said, but added that Washington will continue to press for five-country talks.
North Korea, for its part, appears to be backing off the suggestion it had a nuclear arsenal that it could use as a deterrent against imminent U.S. aggression. The pro-Pyeongyang newspaper published in Japan, Choson Sinbo, said Thursday that “North Korea does not already have nuclear weapons.” What the North has been talking about is that “it has decided to possess that deterrence,” the paper said.
The softening of positions by the two countries came as China’s vice foreign minister, Dai Bingguo, arrived in Washington for talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials about his visit with North Korean officials in Pyeongyang earlier in the week.
The details of his discussions in the communist capital, including a meeting with the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, were still sketchy, but South Korean officials did not deny that a new proposal put forward by Mr. Dai, which has not been rejected by Pyeongyang, included the resumption of dialogue with at least one more round of talks by the three countries that met in Beijing three months ago.
That is just one of the ideas now being floated, the director- general for North American affairs at South Korea’s foreign ministry, Wi Sung-lac, told reporters yesterday. “But the discussions are still fluid,” he continued, “and whatever proposals are being discussed right now should all be considered as part of a process to get the talks restarted.”
The apparent openness by Washington to meet in a three-country format should be taken as the beginning of a process that must lead to the inclusion of South Korea and Japan, Mr. Wi said. There has been no change in the basic U.S. position that the talks should be expanded, he said.
The prospect of Japan’s participation may present a sticking point for Pyeongyang, whose relations with Tokyo have soured sharply since the Japanese government complained last fall over the abduction to North Korea of Japanese citizens by the North’s agents.
To the North, Russia would probably be a more enticing participant in any future multilateral dialogue than Japan, another South Korean official said. Moscow continues to seek a role in the possible dialogue, the official said, having quietly pressed for its inclusion in such talks since its deputy foreign minister, Alexander Losyukov, visited Pyeongyang earlier this year to meet Kim Jong-il.


by Kim Young-sae
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