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China Expects No Major Breakthrough in North Korea Nuclear Negotiations This Week
Multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions will resume for three days beginning Wednesday but are not expected to reach a breakthrough this week, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said today (see GSN, Nov. 4). “It is premature to expect some kind of major achievement. We are at the stage where a new process is starting,” Wu told Kyodo News. “We want to set up another opportunity for further discussions. (The talks) will be resumed within the year,” he said. Wu said a panel of experts should be established to implement the September joint statement under which Pyongyang agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear programs in exchange for aid, Agence France-Presse reported (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 7). There is pressure on the United States to offer some immediate benefits to North Korea in exchange for its pledge to dismantle its nuclear program, AFP reported. “I think the next round is unlikely to yield significant progress, because the two sides are very far apart on what each of them should do at the beginning,” said Selig Harrison, director of the Center for International Policy’s Asia program. Pyongyang wants Washington to “take some steps” toward normalized relations between the two countries, Harrison said. Divisions within the Bush administration on North Korea policy also continue to complicate negotiations, diplomatic sources said. For example, the top U.S. envoy to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, could not obtain approval from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to travel to Pyongyang during the last recess in talks, AFP reported. “The combination of a relatively inflexible and deeply divided foreign policy establishment in Washington and a brutal and difficult ... dictatorship in Pyongyang makes it very hard to imagine that we can proceed ahead without many bumps on the road,” said Kurt Campbell, a former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 6). Tokyo plans to revisit the issue of Cold War-era abductions of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang at this week’s meeting, Kyodo News reported. “Our country will have to raise the nuclear, missile and abduction issues as problems that should be resolved,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said today (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, Nov. 7).
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