Global Security Newswire

The U.S. State Department on Monday said a determination has yet to be made on whether to hold additional discussions with North Korea on its nuclear weapons program and requests for food assistance, the Yonhap News Agency reported (see GSN, Feb. 27).

"No decisions have been made on the six-party talks side or the nutritional assistance side," department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said to journalists less than a week after U.S. special envoy Glyn Davies met with North Korean diplomats in Beijing.

Davies was returning to the United States after briefing partners in the six-party talks about last week's discussions with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. Once he returns to Washington, Davies is slated to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The six-nation talks involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States. The aid-for-denuclearization negotiations were last convened in December 2008. Last week's bilateral meeting was aimed at determining if the circumstances were right for relaunching the paralyzed process, which aims to permanently shut down North Korea's nuclear weapons program. 

"We did make some moderate, modest progress on the nuclear side and on the issue of D.P.R.K.-ROK relations, both of which are absolutely vital if the D.P.R.K. wants to get back into six-party talks," Nuland said.

Pyongyang's requests for food assistance are known to have been brought up at last week's meeting. Reports circulated in late 2011 that the Obama administration was close to reaching a deal to provide a shipment of food in return for the regime's suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that can produce nuclear-weapon material.

Following years of international disengagement after it abandoned the six-party negotiations in April 2009, North Korea has increasingly stepped up its calls for diplomacy and foreign assistance. However, the Stalinist state has sought to exclude South Korea from discussions in favor of bilateral talks with the United States.

North Korea is accused of launching two 2010 attacks that killed 50 South Koreans. The Obama administration has prioritized improved relations between the neighbors as a precondition to any return to six-nation negotiations.

This week, Pyongyang threatened to harshly retaliate against Seoul should it give even a slight provocation during military drills over the coming weeks. The South and the United States are presently holding their annual Key Resolve exercise -- a massive effort that involves approximately 200,000 South Korean military personnel and close to 3,000 U.S. troops.

"We traditionally have this kind of rhetoric and bluster at the time of these exercises. So we wouldn't consider [the latest threats] terribly new," Nuland said (Lee Chi-dong, Yonhap News Agency I, Feb. 27).

Allied officials have emphasized that Key Resolve, which began on Monday, is "routine and defense-oriented," Yonhap reported.

U.N. Command states Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom would send representatives to observe the joint exercise, officials said (Yonhap News Agency II, Feb. 28).

Separately, South Korea's leading liberal opposition party on Tuesday pledged to seek a better relationship with Pyongyang should it be elected to power in parliamentary voting in April, as current polling predicts, Reuters reported.

The conservative ruling party of President Lee Myung-bak has pursued a hard-line policy toward the North. Shortly after Lee entered office in 2008, he ordered that economic assistance to North Korea be drastically scaled back as punishment for the regime's failure to implement previously agreed upon denuclearization actions.

"The Lee Myung-bak government's North Korea policy, the policy of just waiting for the North to change, has failed," said the head of the Democratic United Party, Han Myeong-sook.

"The Democratic United Party will actively pursue normalization of South-North ties and their improvement," Han promised, continuing that economic penalties against the North would be lifted (Jack Kim, Reuters, Feb. 28).

Elsewhere, specialized South Korean security personnel showed off capabilities that will be put to use next month guarding the scores of world leaders scheduled to attend the Global Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN​, Feb. 24).

The Presidential Security Service would monitor the safety of some 40 government heads at the high-profile international forum. Approximately 40,000 security personnel are to be on duty at the summit.

"Our military is maintaining a strengthened security posture in preparation for potential military and nonmilitary provocations by North Korea," Presidential Security Service head Eo Cheong-soo said.

"We are also making thorough preparations to guard the meeting against international terror groups," he said. Those measures include sensors for detecting toxins and radioactive materials.

Summit planners said U.S. President Obama would participate in the event -- a follow-on to his own 2010 forum in Washington.

North Korea's nuclear weapons effort is not scheduled as a discussion topic for the March 26-27 event, but South Korean officials believe the summit will still send a strong signal to Pyongyang. The North has lashed out at the summit as an "unsavory burlesque."

"Despite the (North's) latest spate of rhetoric, there has been no particular movement by North Korean troops, but we must be ready as provocations are always possible," South Korean army Lt. Gen. Shin Hyun-don said (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Feb. 27).