06 May 2009
U.S. Delegation Seeks to Resume North Korea Talks
Washington — A U.S. delegation is traveling to Northeast Asia and Moscow to determine if North Korea can be convinced to resume Six-Party Talks, says a State Department spokesman.
“We all, in the international community, have an interest in seeing a denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said at a May 5 briefing. “The purpose of this trip is to work with our allies to find a way forward in convincing the North to come back to the negotiating table.”
Leading the delegation will be Special Representative Stephen Bosworth; it will include Special Envoy Sung Kim, Wood said. Neither have plans to travel to North Korea, but a meeting with North Korean negotiators could occur at any of the stops.
North Korea has threatened to resume uranium enrichment and other nuclear development activities after the U.N. Security Council condemned its launch of a three-stage missile April 5 in violation of a previous Security Council resolution forbidding such launches.
The group is scheduled to arrive in Beijing May 7. They will then travel to Seoul, South Korea, May 8 for four days of talks before traveling to Tokyo on May 11, Moscow on May 12 and finally returning to Washington on May 14.
“The Six-Party Talks, as we’ve said, are a viable framework,” Wood said. “The North has some obligations under that Six-Party framework.”
The Six-Party Talks are aimed at convincing North Korea to abandon a fledgling nuclear weapons development program, and include China, which acts as host to the talks, North and South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States. In 2005 North Korea agreed to end its nuclear development program in exchange for energy assistance, diplomatic benefits and other concessions from the other nations.
Another significant incentive includes normalizing relations between North Korea and the United States and finalizing a peace agreement to end the 1950-1953 Korean War formally. The United States has already removed North Korea from its State Sponsors of Terrorism List.
“If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, the Obama administration will be willing to normalize bilateral relations, replace the peninsula's long-standing armistice agreements with a permanent peace treaty, and assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said February 13 at the Asia Society in New York before leaving for a four-nation trip to East Asia.
The Six-Party negotiations broke down in 2008 after the North Korean government refused to accept a verification plan for its nuclear holdings. North Korea’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Pak Tok Hun told reporters May 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York that his country does not plan to resume the negotiations, though he later suggested they may rejoin talks under certain conditions.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said May 3 while visiting the Czech Republic that the negotiations should resume as soon as possible. “We decided the Six-Party Talks are the most practical framework for solving the questions around North Korea and that the most important thing is to open these talks again as soon as possible,” Aso said during a press conference in Prague.
APRIL MISSILE LAUNCH
The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea for its launch of a Taepodong-2 three-stage missile into the northeastern Pacific Ocean, and pledged strengthened sanctions against North Korea for violating a U.N. resolution. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the council agreed that North Korea had violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, which forbids North Korea from testing missiles, nuclear weapons and launches. The 2006 resolution came after North Korea conducted a nuclear test.
North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 missile, with a projected range of 6,700 kilometers, April 5. The projected range of the missile would pose a direct threat to Alaska, Hawaii and most of East Asia. While North Korean officials claimed the missile launched a communications satellite into orbit around the earth, the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command reported that the three-stage missile separated over the Pacific and fell into the ocean along with its payload.
The 2006 resolution requires North Korea to suspend all ballistic missile testing and “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”
What foreign affairs decisions should President Obama consider? Comment on America.gov's blog.
