The US is willing to hold a bilateral meeting with North Korea even before six-nation nuclear disarmament talks resume, a senior official said yesterday, in a concession aimed at restarting the stalled dialogue.
US ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said that a one-on-one meeting could take place if the North were to make a commitment to return to the multinational forum on scrapping its nuclear program.
Washington's position previously was that the North had to actually return to the six-nation talks before any bilateral meeting.
Vershbow's comments come amid speculation that the North may be preparing for a nuclear weapons test. Former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage said here on Monday there was an even chance of a test this year.
"We are open to a new approach, as I said last week," Vershbow said, confirming his reported remarks that top US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill could meet the North Koreans even before the stalled disarmament talks resume.
"Assistant Secretary Hill is open to a bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart if Pyongyang commits to return to six-party talks," Vershbow told lawmakers from South Korea's ruling party.
The US, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan signed a joint statement in September last year under which the North would abandon its nuclear program in return for energy and economic aid, eventual diplomatic benefits and security guarantees.
But two months later, North Korea boycotted the forum in protest over US sanctions on a Macau bank which allegedly helped it pass counterfeit US dollars and launder funds.
Seoul's top nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-woo and Hill met in New York last week to follow up on a summit accord between their presidents to push for "a common and broad approach" to reviving the six-way disarmament forum.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that she would travel to Asia in the next six weeks to see whether to make "one last push" to persuade the North to return to the talks.
Vershbow said that Washington is ready to discuss how to implement the one-year-old accord.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema