US officials met twice last week with North Korean officials in New York to tell them the US was ready to resume nuclear negotiations and wanted to resolve the issue diplomatically, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.
"We told the North Koreans that the six-party process is the venue for resolving the nuclear issue and we called on North Korea to follow through on its commitment to the six-party talks," Ereli said Monday.
He said the US requested the meetings because it was felt a face-to-face presentation of the US position might be effective.
Ereli said the US has meetings with North Korea's UN diplomats in New York from time to time when they serve a useful purpose to pass messages and make points known.
He said he did not know how North Korea responded to the US presentation made by Joseph DeTrani, the State Department's special envoy for North Korea negotiations
Ereli said DeTrani left Sunday on a trip to China, South Korea and Japan to continue consultations on getting the nuclear negotiations going again. Russia also is involved in the talks.
Three rounds of six-nation talks aimed at persuading the North to halt weapons development have taken place since last year but without a breakthrough. North Korea boycotted a fourth round scheduled for September and analysts believed it was holding out for a change in the White House.
On Saturday North Korea said after the talks in New York it had concluded that Pyongyang should hold off on nuclear negotiations until the US changes its "hostile" policy toward the country.
The report, from Pyongyang's official news agency KCNA, said officials met on Tuesday and Friday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told The New York Times he was now certain the nuclear material his agency once monitored in North Korea had been converted into fuel for four to six nuclear bombs.
ElBaradei said his judgment that North Korea had converted its stockpile of spent nuclear fuel into weapons-grade plutonium was not based on new intelligence.
Instead, he said, it was based on the agency's years of accumulated knowledge of North Korea's abilities, and the amount of time that had passed since North Korea ejected inspectors and began removing the 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that inspectors had been monitoring.
"I'm sure they have reprocessed it all," he said. "We know they have the fissile material," he said, referring to the rods, which can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.
"The production process is not that difficult" to turn the rods into bomb fuel, and now enough time has passed for North Korea to have solved any production problems, he said.
North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze plutonium production but in 2002 renounced the deal and ejected the IAEA after Washington accused it of trying to produce highly enriched uranium.
Asked whether the two New York meetings had moved the ball forward on North Korea, US State Department number-two Richard Armitage said: "I'm not sure."
"We'll have to wait until they digest what was said," said Armitage, who last week expressed the hope that the six party talks could resume by the first week of January.
The State Department refused to discuss the specifics or get into details on the meeting with the North Koreans.
Ereli said the US indicated to them it remained ready to resume the six-party talks at an early date, without preconditions, and called on Pyongyang to follow through on its commitment to continue with the discussions.
But a North Korean spokesman said at the weekend that Pyongyang would not return to the negotiating table until the lineup of a new US administration following President George W. Bush's re-election was fully known.
Washington intended to use the six-party talks to force North Korea to dismantle all its nuclear program, including those for peaceful purposes, he said.
Three rounds of talks have been held so far but North Korea refused to participate in the fourth round in September after rejecting a US aid-for-disarmament offer.
Ereli downplayed the significance of the New York meeting, stressing that the "the real substance, the real engagement, the real diplomacy is conducted" through the six-party process.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS