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South Korea to Push for Resuming Nuclear Talks
Top South Korea nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-woo has scheduled a round of shuttle diplomacy in a renewed push to revive stalled multilateral negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear programs, Reuters reported today (see GSN, Feb. 21). “We expect the overall picture for the six-party talks will surface through the chief envoy’s visit to related countries for close consultations,” said Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon (Reuters, Feb. 22). Washington has presented South Korean officials with specimens of the high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency allegedly by North Korea in 2001 and 2003, a U.S. Embassy official in Seoul told the Associated Press today. “We have … determined that at least some of the $140,000 worth of counterfeit notes seized by (South Korean) police in April 2005 were 2001 series supernotes from the same family of notes that we have determined were manufactured in and distributed by the D.P.R.K.,” the official told AP (Burt Herman, Associated Press, Feb. 22). Meanwhile, the United States is lobbying China to put more pressure on North Korea to return to multilateral talks, the Financial Times reported today. “As soon as the Chinese let us know that they’re ready, we’ll be there,” said the top U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. “China has enormous leverage with North Korea, but China is also North Korea’s neighbor. And when you’re a neighbor you sometimes don’t always use all the leverage that you could have,” Hill said. “We think everybody should try to do more.” “I don’t think (North Korea is) going to walk away from an agreement that involves all of its neighbors because (it) is going to live with those neighbors for a long time,” he added (Dombey/Fifield, Financial Times, Feb. 22). Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi held talks yesterday with Hill and Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick to prepare for a state visit by President Hu Jintao and to discuss the North Korean nuclear standoff, Agence France-Presse reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 21).
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