Powell Meets North Korean Foreign Minister; Rice to Visit South Korea Next Week

Secretary of State Colin Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun met this morning in Indonesia, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, June 30).

The State Department announced after the 20-minute meeting that Powell “emphasized the administration’s proposals to move forward on dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear programs” and that “there was an opportunity for concrete progress.”

The “discussion was useful to help clarify each side’s proposals,” agency spokesman Richard Boucher added.

North Korea also issued a statement following the two officials’ meeting during the regional forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, according to the Post.

“If the United States is of the position to improve the bilateral relations, (North Korea) also will not regard the U.S. as a permanent enemy,” said the statement, attributed to Paek.

Yesterday, Powell emphasized that the United States would only provide aid to North Korea once it demonstrates “irreversible steps” leading to dismantlement of its nuclear programs.

“We have to see deeds before we are prepared to put something on the table,” he said (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 2).

Meanwhile, North Korea said yesterday that a freeze on plutonium it had proposed only covers materials reprocessed after Jan. 10, 2003, when it announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Reuters reported.

Pyongyang’s ambassador to China, Choe Jin Su, clarified the proposal, offered during the six-party talks in Beijing last week, in an interview yesterday with Kyodo News (Reuters, July 1).

Elsewhere, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is preparing to visit South Korea next week, the office of President Roh Moo-hyun announced today, according to Agence France-Presse.

Rice is expected to arrive in Seoul on July 9 as U.S. President George W. Bush’s special envoy to discuss North Korea’s nuclear programs, among other issues, with Roh (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 2).

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