North Korea announced yesterday it would resume talks in Beijing on Feb. 25 with the US, China and neighboring countries seeking to resolve a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear-arms ambitions.
The date for a second round of talks was given after months of intensive shuttle diplomacy since the first six-party session in August. The talks also include Russia, Japan and South Korea.
"The DPRK and the US, the major parties concerned to the six-way talks, and China, the host country, agreed to resume the next round of the six-way talks from Feb. 25 after having a series of discussions," said the official KCNA news agency.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
The announcement came a day after Pakistani officials said the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb had confessed to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea along with Libya and Iran.
China confirmed the date of the talks.
South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck told a news conference: "We expect the talks to last three days, but it's open-ended."
Lee, who headed the South Korean delegation at the August talks, said the five parties excluding North Korea expected this month's session could produce a "working group able to discuss the substantive and technical issues".
"There is a recognition of the need for such a working group. Whether North Korea will accept that is difficult to say, considering how sensitive North Korea's position can be," he said.
The US wants North Korea to commit -- at least by the end of the next round -- to dismantling any nuclear-arms programs. Washington has offered then to lay out in detail how it could guarantee not to attack the state US President George W. Bush called part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic recognition from the US as the first step in resolving the dispute.
The crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials, including chief North Korea negotiator James Kelly, reported that North Korean officials had admitted at a meeting with them that Pyongyang was pursuing a clandestine nuclear-weapons program.
North Korea has since denied the US account but Kelly reiterated last month there had been no ambiguity at the meeting.
Other officials have said the US case is based on the intelligence that prompted the North's initial admission.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in Tokyo on Monday that the stalemate over North Korea's nuclear-arms program was a "dangerous and unstable situation."
The talks announcement came just before a delegation of North Korean officials arrived in Seoul for separate cabinet-level talks with South Korea.
South Korean officials have said they intend to use the 13th round of inter-Korean ministerial talks since 2000 to urge North Korea to resolve the nuclear dispute, which has been an impediment to deeper economic exchanges seen as vital to reviving the North's struggling economy.
Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr on Tuesday hit out at China at an international forum after a memo asserting Beijing’s position over their longstanding maritime dispute was delivered to him while he was speaking on stage. The unusual incident was captured on video at the Seoul Defense Dialogue as the secretary was responding to a question about “gray zone” coercion in the South China Sea. The video shows what appears to be a conference staffer placing it on the table next to him while speaking. “I have a note here, I think this is from China,” he said, describing
Thai police yesterday said that they arrested a senior Buddhist monk on suspicion of embezzling US$2.8 million intended for his monastery, alongside a suspected female accomplice he was having sex with. The case is the latest scandal to hit the clergy in Buddhist-majority Thailand after a sex and extortion case involving senior monks last year prompted public outrage and calls for greater scrutiny of temple finances. Phra Wachirayan Wi, the 66-year-old abbot of the 14th-century Wat Phutthaisawan in the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, was arrested on Thursday on charges including embezzlement and money laundering, lead police investigator Pattanasak Bupphasuwan said. A 47-year-old woman
SECRET FOOTAGE: A 17-year-old girl told British broadcaster Channel 4 that she had been approached by a man who covertly recorded her and their interaction Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online — with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, with sales now hitting millions. The devices grabbed attention this summer after a marketing tie-up between Kylie Jenner, beauty mogul and member of the Kardashian dynasty, and tech giant Meta. Since smartphones are now embedded in daily life, “big tech” is
China yesterday marked half a century since the death of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), founder of the People’s Republic, who brought roughly one-quarter of the world’s population under communist rule and whose specter still haunts China’s future. Mao’s death on Sept. 9, 1976, at age 82, mourned by many and welcomed by some who suffered under his nearly three-decade rule, also hastened the end of the Cultural Revolution, a frenzied mass movement he launched in 1966. The party later condemned the Cultural Revolution as a grave error for which Mao bore primary responsibility, but still reveres him, saying his achievements outweigh his mistakes. Mao’s
RSS