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North Korea Ready For Nuclear Talks Next Year
North Korea has agreed to six-nation talks early next year to defuse the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 19). Pyongyang reportedly agreed to the talks after a three-day visit by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China will most likely host the talks, which are also scheduled to include Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. “Both sides … expressed their willingness to make appropriate preparations so that talks can resume at an early date next year to continue the process for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said. North Korea blamed the United States for delays in arranging the talks. “The main problem in preparing for the next round of six-nation talks is the United States’ refusal to make a shift in its policy and its insistence that we disarm ourselves by abandoning our nuclear program first,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said (Associated Press/CNN.com, Dec. 28). China confirmed the agreement. “Concerning the second round of six-party talks, there is a consensus on staging it as early as possible next year, and North Korea also agrees to this,” said Fu Ying, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Asian Affairs Bureau. The timing of the meetings is still unclear, according to Wi Sung-lac, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs Bureau. “January is mentioned in some press reports, but that is not necessarily the case,” Wi said (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, Dec. 29). The United States, meanwhile, said that it will increase its food aid to North Korea after the U.N. World Food Program reported fewer obstacles to monitoring food distribution in the reclusive, famine-ravaged country. Washington has already donated 40,000 tons of food in 2003 and will put forward an additional 60,000 tons, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said last week (Elise Labott, CNN.com, Dec. 25).
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