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March or April Eyed for North Korean Nuclear Talks
Negotiators are trying to set a March or April date for a return to multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs, Reuters reported today (see GSN, Feb. 14). China, North Korea and the United States have conducted bilateral meetings to discuss U.S. financial sanctions on firms believed to be connected to illicit North Korean financial activities, Yonhap News quoted a South Korean official as saying. “The countries participating in the talks believe it would be desirable to hold the next round in late March or early April, and related countries are holding contacts,” the official told Yonhap. “The level of contacts now (between North Korea and the United States) is at the working level and not to talk about a specific matter or substantive issues,” the official added. “But it’s possible there is substantive dialogue between China and North Korea” (Jack Kim, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Feb. 21). The Russian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, announced that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev met yesterday in Moscow to discuss the potential for a return to the talks, RIA Novosti reported (RIA Novosti, Feb. 20). Elsewhere, the newly installed top South Korean nuclear negotiator warned that the six-party talks are at risk of becoming irrelevant if they do not show results soon, the Associated Press reported yesterday. “If we repeat rounds of talks without progress, it could rather give rise to views that the talks are of no use,” said Chun Young-woo, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning and International Organizations Office. Chun, a nonproliferation and disarmament expert, was involved in implementation of the now-defunct 1994 Agreed Framework, according to AP (Jae-Soon Chang, Associated Press, Feb. 20).
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