Global Security Newswire

South Korea is pushing to meet with Japan and the United States so that the three allies can align their respective postures for responding to the North Korean nuclear impasse, Kyodo News reported on Wednesday (see GSN, Nov. 8).

"Since the Geneva dialogue, we have been seeking to hold trilateral talks with the U.S. and Japan to assess the current situation and coordinate opinions," an anonymous South Korean Foreign Ministry official told the Yonhap News Agency in reference to last month's meeting in Switzerland between Obama administration officials and North Korean diplomats.

That meeting was reported to have narrowed somewhat the differences on appropriate conditions for relaunching a moribund six-nation negotiation process focused on irreversible North Korean denuclearization.

"Senior officials in charge of the North Korea nuclear issue from the three nations are considering holding talks alongside the East Asia Summit late next week," the anonymous official said.

The trilateral meeting is expected to be attended by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, South Korean representative to the six-party talks Lim Sung Nam and Japanese nuclear negotiator Shinsuke Sugiyama (Kyodo News I, Nov. 9).

The six-party talks encompass China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States. The aid-for-denuclearization negotiations last took place in December 2008.

Washington's former chief negotiator at the nuclear talks in an interview with Kyodo said the Stalinist state could be planning a third nuclear test.

Pyongyang carried out nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Former U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth also rejected assertions by the North that its recently declared uranium enrichment program was only focused on peaceful pursuits (Kyodo News II, Nov. 9).

Tokyo, Seoul and Washington want the North to cease all enrichment of uranium, which can be used to produce fissile material, before the six-nation talks are reinvigorated. Pyongyang has rejected that demand.

Meanwhile, a high-ranking U.S. Navy officer on Wednesday said North Korea is his top security concern over all other Asian nations, even China, the Associated Press reported.

Pyongyang's "unpredictability" is the primary cause for this concern," said Vice Adm. Scott Swift (Associated Press/Google News, Nov. 9).

Elsewhere, a prominent U.S. nuclear weapons expert said he believes Seoul could serve as a crucial mediator in efforts to build global consensus on the importance of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials, Yonhap reported.

Seoul is to host the second Global Nuclear Security Summit in May.

"Many countries in the developing world see the recent concern about nuclear security as another way for the developed world to prevent them from enjoying the benefits of nuclear energy," Harvard University academic Matthew Bunn said in an interview on the sidelines of an international disarmament conference on Jeju Island in South Korea.

"A country like South Korea, which is sort of a bridge between the developed and developing worlds, can help overcome these attitudes and help deal with these obstacles," Bunn said.

"South Korea is in a position to lead by example. South Korea has no highly enriched uranium or plutonium on its own soil. That's something to be proud of ... to convince other countries that you can have a nuclear power program, you can be an advanced nuclear power state that's exporting to other countries, and you don't have to have highly enriched uranium, you don't have to have plutonium in order to do that," he said (Lee Haye-ah, Yonhap News Agency, Nov. 7).