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Fractious North Korea Nuclear Talks End With No Public Progress Six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis ended Friday with a senior Chinese official blaming the lack of progress on the United States. The talks were marked by North Korea announcing that it intends to test a nuclear weapon, according to reports (see GSN, Aug. 22). “America’s policy toward the D.P.R.K. — that is the main problem we are facing,” said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Beijing’s chief delegate at the talks. “We want [the] U.S. to make clear its position,” Wang said (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, Sept. 2). North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il said Wednesday that North Korea intends to test a nuclear weapon, according to the Associated Press. He also accused Japanese and Russian officials of lying at the behest of the United States (Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press/Washington Post, Aug. 28). During the negotiations — which included China, Japan, Russia, the United States, North Korea and South Korea — Pyongyang reportedly offered to abandon it nuclear weapons production and open its facilities to inspectors in exchange for a U.S. nonaggression treaty, financial assistance and energy aid (Xinhua News Agency, Sept. 2). During the talks, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met informally with North Korean diplomat Kim, Reuters reported (Rhoads/Kitano, Reuters, Aug. 27). Days before the meeting began, a top U.S. State Department expert on North Korea resigned. Jack Pritchard, the U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, was recently criticized by Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) for not delivering a hawkish message in his dealing with Pyongyang (Christopher Marquis, New York Times, Aug. 26). The talks concluded Friday, and at that point Chinese officials said all the participating nations had agreed on the need for future meetings. Within 24 hours, however, North Korea announced that it had no need for future talks (Kahn, New York Times). Today, North Korea altered its approach and said it has “not yet changed our firm will to resolve the nuclear problem between the D.P.R.K. and the United States through dialogue” (Sang-hun Choe, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 2).
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