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North Korean Response to Meeting With U.S. Officials Expected in Two Weeks, Report Says
North Korea has said it would deliver a response in two weeks to issues raised at a meeting with U.S. officials last week, the Kyodo News agency reported today (see GSN, May 18). The two sides had working-level contact Friday in New York, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo told the Associated Press today. Senior U.S. State Department officials reportedly told the North Korean side that Washington recognizes Kim Jong Il as leader of the sovereign nation and that Washington does not intend to attack the country, according to AP. Joseph DeTrani, the U.S. special envoy to the six-nation nuclear talks, and Jim Foster, the head of the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, attended the meeting, the Boston Globe reported (Joseph Coleman, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 19). DeTrani said yesterday that the United States would be open to more direct engagement with North Korea if it agrees to resume six-party talks, Reuters reported. “Commit to coming back to the six-party process and that (the New York channel) is part of the equation. Bilaterals across the board would be available,” he said (Jack Kim, Reuters, May 19). Pyongyang had not pledged to return to the multilateral negotiations as it ended direct talks today with Seoul, Reuters reported. South Korea promised to begin shipping 200,000 tons of fertilizer to the North on Saturday, according to a joint statement. Seoul had pressed Pyongyang to include a formal recognition of the seriousness of the nuclear crisis in their joint declaration. The nuclear crisis was not, however, mentioned in the statement (Reuters, May 19). Meanwhile, the New Straits Times reported today that China seems to be adopting a tougher stance on North Korea. If North Korea remains committed to pursuing nuclear weapons, Beijing might not block the United States and Japan from introducing a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing Pyongyang, a Chinese source said. The source also said Beijing views as absurd North Korea’s request for bilateral talks with the United States on the basis of their equality as nuclear powers. “This is daydreaming,” he said. “The United States would never agree to it.” “[The North Koreans] want to be a de facto nuclear power, like India and Pakistan,” the source said. “But the United States would not live with that” (Frank Ching, New Straits Times, May 19).
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