North Korean leader Kim Jong-il reportedly dispatched his top nuclear envoy to Beijing yesterday to discuss restarting nuclear disarmament talks, a day after pledging Pyongyang’s commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
Kim made the disarmament pledge during a meeting on Monday with a high-level envoy from Beijing at the start of a week of diplomacy designed to get the six-nation nuclear talks back on track. A high-level UN envoy also flew to Pyongyang yesterday for a four-day trip.
North Korea walked away from the talks last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs. The disarmament process includes the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US.
Pyongyang, however, has been reaching out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months, and has taken tentative steps toward discussing how to get the process going again. Analysts say the about-face shows the regime is feeling the pinch from sanctions taken after its May nuclear test.
“The sincerity of relevant parties to resume the six-party talks is very important,” Kim said during a meeting with top Chinese Communist Party official Wang Jiarui, (王家瑞) China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported from Pyongyang. Kim reiterated his country’s “persistent stance to realize the denuclearization” of the peninsula, the report said.
Wang delivered to Kim a letter from Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) saying Beijing also is ready to enhance cooperation and work with North Korea to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, Xinhua said. Hu also invited Kim to visit China, the report said.
Later yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu (馬朝旭) confirmed Kim’s denuclearization pledge, saying the leader “expressed the view that [North Korea] remains in favor of realizing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
Yesterday, South Korean media reports said North Korea’s top nuclear envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, landed in Beijing with Wang, who was returning home after a four-day trip to Pyongyang. The North Korean envoy was expected to discuss the nuclear talks with Chinese officials, the Yonhap news agency said, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing.
Ma said he had no information on the envoy’s reported trip.
“This is a sign that the resumption of the six-party talks is imminent,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “Kim Kye- gwan is expected to tell Chinese officials about North Korea’s disarmament plan in a more concrete manner” — probably in return for aid from Beijing, he said.
UN political chief B. Lynn Pascoe, meanwhile, embarked on a trip to the North, with footage broadcast by APTN in Pyongyang showing him stepping off an airport shuttle, shaking hands and chatting with North Korean officials.
Pascoe said the talks are to find “ways we can cooperate better,” according to the footage. “So it should be quite useful.”
Pascoe’s trip will be the first there by a high-level UN official since 2004, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry. The envoy is reportedly bearing a letter from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Pascoe’s role is to try negotiating a breakthrough on the nuclear talks, said analyst Paik Hak-soon of the private Sejong Institute think tank in South Korea.
North Korea has made clear it wants UN sanctions lifted and a peace treaty with Washington formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean War before it returns to the disarmament talks. Pyongyang cites the US military presence in South Korea as its main reason for building up its nuclear weapons program.
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