US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a visit to South Korea yesterday as she sought to coordinate with the close ally on the next step forward with North Korea.
US officials said they were largely deferring to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak over when to re-engage North Korea, believing that any negotiations would be counterproductive unless Seoul is on board.
Clinton is scheduled to meet Lee over breakfast today. Shortly after her arrival yesterday, she was expected to hold talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan.
Photo: Reuters
Clinton, who was arriving from sometimes contentious NATO talks in Berlin over the Libya war, will also visit Japan today in a show of support after its March 11 tsunami, the US ally’s worst disaster since World War II.
Her visit to Seoul comes amid a renewal of diplomatic activity over North Korea. Former US president Jimmy Carter, an advocate of reaching out to Pyongyang, is expected to visit later this month with fellow elder statesmen.
President Barack Obama took office with a goal of reaching out even to US adversaries.
However, he has taken a hard line on North Korea, which carried out nuclear and missile tests in 2009, just months into the new US administration.
North Korea last year also shelled a civilian-populated island in South Korea and was blamed for the sinking of the South’s Cheonan warship — leading the US to urge North Korea repeatedly to “cease provocations.”
TALKS
North Korea, with support from China, has called for a resumption of six-nation talks — which also involve Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US — on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
The US has said it is ready to hold talks eventually, but first wants North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s regime to commit clearly to 2005 and 2007 agreements at the six-way talks, under which it agreed to disarm in return for aid.
Western aid groups that visited North Korea this year said that it is again in dire need of food assistance. The impoverished country suffered a famine in the late 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
However, the Obama administration is seeking a fuller accounting of North Korea’s needs. Some US officials and lawmakers fear that North Korea may be seeking aid to bolster celebrations next year marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the regime’s founder Kim Il-sung.
Despite the public hard line, the US may be obliged to pursue diplomacy once again with North Korea to free a US citizen arrested after crossing into the tightly controlled country.
The US has in the past sent former presidents, including Carter and Bill Clinton, to win the release of Americans held in North Korea while insisting that such efforts were a one-off and not part of a broader outreach.
JAPAN
In Japan, Clinton is to meet Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and have tea with Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, an unusual Sunday function for the Imperial Palace.
The US, which stations 47,000 troops in Japan, launched a round-the-clock military effort dubbed “Operation Tomodachi,” or “friend,” to ferry supplies to the tsunami-devastated northeastern coast.
The disaster has temporarily cast aside disputes between Japan and the US, including over the location of a Marine base that has been unpopular with some residents of the southern island of Okinawa.
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