SEOUL/WASHINGTON, April 16: The United States, North Korea and China will hold talks in Beijing next week on Pyongyang’s suspected nuclear weapons ambitions, US and South Korean officials said on Wednesday, raising hopes of a way out of the six-month-old crisis.
Analysts said it was early days in the arduous process of dealing with communist North Korea, whose reputation as a no-holds-barred negotiator stretches back to the Korean War.
“I don’t think anyone is betting on an easy time,” said a Western diplomat in Seoul.
But the prospect of an easing of tension propelled South Korean shares to a 12-week closing high and was welcomed by Seoul and Tokyo — even though those two close US allies will not take part in the meeting in the Chinese capital.
The relatively quick US-led victory over Iraq appears to have played an important role in prompting North Korea to retreat from its insistence on bilateral talks with Washington, although South Korea’s foreign minister said Pyongyang’s main ally, China, helped bring about a compromise on the talks format.
“We expect multilateral talks with North Korea to take place in Beijing next week,” said a US official in Seoul, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We’ve consulted very closely with South Korea, and they have expressed their approval.”
TWO CHOICES: South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan, in a news conference confirming that talks would be held next week, said Seoul intended to play a central role in multilateral diplomacy.
In the face of public dismay at South Korea’s exclusion, Yoon said Seoul “chose the safer of two options” — oppose the trilateral arrangement and risk scuppering talks or support three-way dialogue on condition of future participation.
“We will not bear any responsibilities arising from discussions in which we did not take part,” Yoon said. Seoul was shut out of a deal between Pyongyang and Washington in 1994 that ended the previous North Korea nuclear crisis.
“It will be hard to achieve concrete results without South Korean participation,” he said, adding that he believed Japan and Russia would also play a role as diplomacy unfolded.
North and South Korea have been technically at war since their 1950-53 civil conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
Officials in Washington earlier confirmed a New York Times report that President George W. Bush had approved a plan to begin talks with North Korea with China taking part.
The developments came after the North signalled last weekend it was willing to go along with a US demand for multilateral talks, after having insisted for months it wanted to talk only to Washington about its suspected nuclear plans. Yoon and the US official could not confirm the talks would be held on April 23, as reported by Japan’s Kyodo news agency, but they said Washington would announce details overnight.—Reuters
