N Korea offered sweetener to scrap nuclear programmes
South Korea’s offer to compensate North Korea if it gives up its nuclear programmes was on the table today as six-country talks reconvened and the United States continued its push for a verifiable end to the North’s ambitions of becoming a nuclear power.
Delegates in Beijing entered the second day of negotiations emphasising that any conclusions were premature. “It’s just getting started,” Japan’s delegate, foreign ministry director General Mitoji Yabunaka, said, before the talks reconvened.
Reports that the United States and North Korea met for a second time today could not be confirmed by South Korean officials in both Seoul and Beijing, and the US Embassy in Beijing said it had no immediate information on any meeting.
The second day of meetings among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States on the nuclear standoff followed a rare, lengthy one-on-one session between top officials from Washington and Pyongyang – the two key players in the dispute.
Neither side gave details of the meeting yesterday, but the US State Department described it as “useful”.
North Korea and the United States have been at odds over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions for years and especially since October 2002, when Kelly said the North told him it had a secret weapons programme based on enriched uranium.
North Korea denies it has a uranium programme in addition to its known plutonium-based program, but it brandishes the threat of what it vaguely describes as its ”nuclear deterrent” in an effort to extract concessions.
The impoverished North wants aid in return for halting its nuclear programmes, and in December demanded economic aid and other US concessions in return for a freeze. Washington said at the time that Pyongyang must not only freeze, but start dismantling, its nuclear programmes first.
North Korea also wants a non-aggression treaty with the United States or at least a security guarantee from all five of its negotiating partners.
All of North Korea’s partners in the talks say they want a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.
Many state-controlled Chinese newspapers followed the upbeat narrative of their government today, which took the lead in brokering the talks – that civil, sincere progress was poised to take place.
“No matter how short or long the talks are, the responses certainly won’t disappoint,” said the state-run Beijing Daily Messenger. And from the Beijing News: “The first day of talks: flexibility, liveliness, patience.”
This week’s meeting is the second round of six-party talks. The first one in August, scheduled for three days only, yielded little more than a vague promise to meet again. Parties have made this meeting open-ended, hoping for more progress.
“I think it’s realistic optimism,” said Bill Tow, a professor of international relations at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. “They wouldn’t have come together at this juncture unless they felt there was a reasonable chance there might be some progress made.”
