|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
North Korea Envoy Sees No Progress at Nuclear Talks
North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator said today that no progress had been made at talks in Beijing aimed at resolving the standoff over his country’s nuclear ambitions, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Aug. 1). “The duration of talks was long, but there was no progress,” the Yonhap news agency quoted Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan as saying. “We are in a situation where there are differences in opinions and some issues of contention,” Kim said. Top envoys from all six negotiating nations met again today for the first time since Saturday, according to AP (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 2). U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the North Korean and U.S. negotiators had failed to overcome some central differences, Agence France-Presse reported. “I need to be very clear that there are a lot of differences between the North Korean side on one hand and everyone else on the other hand,” said Hill, chief U.S. envoy to the talks. “Frankly we were not able to bridge any differences,” he said. He added that the two delegations were unlikely to meet again today, following a series of bilateral talks. The North Korean delegation was refusing U.S. demands that it commit in writing to dismantling all its nuclear programs and admit to possessing a uranium enrichment program, according to Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 2). Japanese and U.S. negotiators are insisting that any final text from the talks state that North Korea must abandon both its military and civilian nuclear programs, the Asahi Shimbun reported today. However, asked Thursday if China views “denuclearization” as including nuclear energy programs, Chinese delegation spokesman Qin Gan replied in a way that was taken to mean that Beijing supports North Korea’s right to civil nuclear development, according to Asahi. Seoul, meanwhile, has avoided addressing the issue, but some experts believe South Korea would be open to allowing the North to have a nuclear energy program, according to Asahi (Yu Yoshitake, Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 2). A North Korean source said talks were likely to end tomorrow, Reuters reported. “Our estimate is that the round should end on Wednesday,” the source told Interfax. “We believe that if we fail to sign a final document, that would mean that the fourth round ... failed” (Ueno/Kim, Reuters, Aug. 2). Some experts were more optimistic about the progress of the talks, AP reported. “North Korea has a tendency to use brinkmanship in the last stage to get maximum concessions,” said Ko Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean studies at South Korea’s Dongguk University. “The pessimistic atmosphere or last-minute struggle can, in a way, be seen as a sign that we are close to getting results from the talks” (Audra Ang, Associated Press/Canada.com, Aug. 2). Meanwhile, Japan’s Defense Agency identified North Korea as a threat in its annual report but declined to say definitively that Pyongyang had developed nuclear weapons, AFP reported today. “There are views that North Korea is resorting to brinkmanship by intentionally heightening tension” by announcing that it has an atomic bomb, an agency white paper states. However, “the possibility of North Korea having considerably advanced its nuclear weapons program cannot be excluded,” it adds. “North Korea needs to be watched carefully because of the problems it poses with its development, deployment and proliferation of ballistic missiles as well as the nuclear problems in general,” the report goes on to say (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 2).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
