A top North Korean nuclear envoy is set to visit the US next month for rare bilateral talks, a news report said yesterday, as diplomats pushed to revive negotiations on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Plans call for North Korea’s Kim Kye-gwan to travel to the US in March, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported from Beijing, citing an unidentified source.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Fred Lash said late on Thursday that he had not seen the report.
A meeting between the North Korean envoy and US officials would be a strong sign that the push to get the disarmament talks back on track was gaining traction. It would also confirm a warming in relations between the US and North Korea, wartime rivals that do not have diplomatic relations.
North Korea, believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs, walked away from disarmament-for-aid negotiations last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs.
However, after tightened sanctions and financial isolation, the impoverished nation has reached out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months.
Earlier, spokesman P.J. Crowley said US officials haven’t ruled out future meetings with the North Koreans, but “we believe firmly that the next meeting that US representatives and others should have with North Korea is through a formal six-party meeting.”
The disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and host China.
Officials from the US and North Korea last met one-on-one in December, when US President Barack Obama’s special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, visited Pyongyang. The bilateral talks were the first since Obama took office.
In Beijing, the North Korean nuclear negotiator met for three days this week with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei (武大偉), and they were expected to meet again yesterday, reports said.
Kim, the negotiator, on Thursday told reporters they shared a “deep exchange of views ... on issues of interest, including China-North Korea relations, signing of a peace treaty and resumption of the six-party talks.”
The negotiator declined to give further details.
North Korea wants sanctions eased and a peace treaty with the US formally ending the 1950 to 1953 Korean War if it returns to the talks.
Meanwhile, the UN political chief, Lynn Pascoe, was in Pyongyang this week. Pascoe, the highest-ranking UN diplomat to visit North Korea since 2004, met on Thursday with North Korea’s No. 2 official, conveying a message from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, broadcaster APTN reported from Pyongyang.
Pascoe also presented Kim with a leather-bound copy of the UN charter, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said at UN headquarters in New York. He said Pascoe was to leave Pyongyang yesterday.
The rush of diplomacy raised hopes of a breakthrough on restarting the negotiations after Kim Jong-il assured a high-level Chinese envoy on Monday that his government is committed to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have all urged Pyongyang to return to the disarmament talks and show progress on denuclearization before any discussions on a peace treaty or sanctions.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, responded to a North Korean proposal to hold military-level talks to discuss joint projects by suggesting a Feb. 23 meeting, Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters.
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