Senior North Korean officials held informal talks this week at two US think tanks, but US participants said on Friday they foresaw no breakthroughs on nuclear inspections or the resumption of six-way peace talks.
Ri Gun, the North Korean foreign ministry’s chief expert on US affairs, led a delegation that met behind closed doors with former US ambassadors and other North Korea experts in San Diego on Monday and Tuesday and in New York on Friday. No US officials attended Friday’s meeting, though a State Department official did go to San Diego.
North Korea carried out nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests earlier this year, but North Korean leader Kim Jong-il recently said his country could rejoin international disarmament talks, depending on the status of direct talks with the US.
The US has said it is willing to hold direct talks with North Korea if it leads to resumption of the six-party talks aimed at halting the country’s nuclear weapons programs. The talks would also involve South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.
For the San Diego meetings, the US State Department sent Sung Kim, the US special envoy to the now-suspended six-party talks.
Both sides also met on Oct. 24 when the North Koreans arrived in New York.
However, no State Department representative attended the New York meetings on Friday, and State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters in Washington that no further meetings were scheduled between US officials and the North Koreans.
At a news conference on Friday following the conclusion of the New York talks, Winston Lord, a former US ambassador to China and assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said “nobody pulled any punches” in the private talks.
But “the mood was much better than we’ve seen in months,” Lord said.
Lord said he heard no specific initiatives that would be ice-breakers during the group sessions.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted Ri as saying after the New York meeting that “I had a useful dialogue,” and that he had met with Kim at the request of the US government.
He did not comment on other details of his visit.
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