N Korea 'wooed back to nuclear talks'
In a diplomatic breakthrough, the Bush administration said it had wooed North Korea back to negotiations on the Koreans’ nuclear weapons program, though a date had not been set for reopening the long-stalled talks.
In New York, China’s United Nations ambassador said six-nation talks were likely to resume in the next few weeks in Beijing. Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters the talks were the best way to resolve the nuclear stand-off and said he was hopeful progress would be made.
The negotiations, in which the US and four other countries want to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, have been dormant for a year despite the North’s promise to meet again last September.
The turnabout followed a stream of North Korean invective directed at the Bush administration – but also came after a Pentagon threat to try to punish North Korea in the UN Security Council was withdrawn.
The threat is not off the table, though. Taking the dispute to the council “is an option we always reserve for when we think it’s appropriate,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“This provides the North Koreans, we think, a basic choice, a pathway forward, in which they would again be able to potentially realize the respect that they have asked for and to get the assistance that they potentially need,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
North Korea’s UN Ambassador Pak Gil Yon confirmed to Associated Press Television News that he met on Monday morning with State Department envoy Joseph DiTrani.
“We discussed the matters of common interest, including that of the bilateral or six-party talks,” he said, but refused to comment further.
The Bush administration strongly favours the six-nation negotiations as the only format for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, resisting the North’s repeated efforts to bargain solely with the US.
