China Expected to Urge North Korea’s Return to Six-Party Talks

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell says there is a strong consensus for North Korea’s return to multilateral talks.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer
September 22, 2009

Washington — The Obama administration is anticipating high-level talks between China and North Korea in which Beijing will clearly communicate its desire for North Korea to return to the multilateral process known as the Six-Party Talks, which are aimed at ending Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.

According to Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, the “essential focus” of each of North Korea’s partners in the talks — South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States — is that “we return to a Six-Party framework, and that we will encourage, strongly, North Korean interlocutors to accept that reality.”

Speaking in New York September 21, Campbell said, “The country that has been clearest and firmest about this is probably China,” which has historically been the country with the closest ties to North Korea’s leadership.

“We think over the course of the next several weeks, there’s going to be a series of very high-level engagements between North Korea and China,” Campbell said. “During these meetings, we expect China to take a fairly clear line about their desire to see North Korea resume interactions as part of a Six-Party framework.”

Campbell said the Obama administration has been “very gratified” by Chinese indications of their desire to work closely with the United States and the other members of the Six-Party process “in ensuring that North Korea returns to a responsible diplomatic set of interactions.”

Among her bilateral meetings ahead of the 64th United Nations General Assembly, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met separately with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and Japan’s new foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, in New York September 21.

Campbell said the United States and South Korea pledged to continue to work together to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which implements sanctions against North Korea aimed at restricting the country’s ability to fund or import materials for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, including stopping and inspecting cargo ships and planes suspected of carrying banned cargo.

Clinton and Yu “agreed that we were starting to see effective coordination not just among a few of the Asian states, but in the Middle East and elsewhere,” Campbell said. “Several states have taken steps without pressing from the United States or other countries. They have unilaterally chose[n] to either inspect cargoes or turn ships back to port in North Korea.”

Clinton and Yu also discussed the possibility of providing humanitarian assistance such as food and medicine to North Korea, with the need to verify its delivery and distribution so that it would be received by those who need it most.

The assistant secretary said South Korea and other participants in the Six-Party Talks agree that North Korea must accept the commitment it had agreed to in 2005 and again in 2007 to undertake a “verifiable set of steps towards a nuclear-free [Korean] peninsula.”

The other Six-Party members have also recognized that “should the United States in the near future decide to have some bilateral interactions with North Korea, they are as part of a process to get back to a Six-Party framework,” he said.

North Korea had invited U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Stephen Bosworth and Ambassador Sung Kim, the State Department’s special envoy for the Six-Party Talks, to hold direct talks. Campbell said “no final decision” has been made by the Obama administration “about the next steps and any prospective diplomacy with North Korea.”

“Our sessions with our South Korean friends were really designed today to get feedback from them. And I think their underlying message was that they were prepared for the United States to engage in careful bilateral interactions with North Korea,” he said.

The South Korean delegation clearly indicated that their goal is that any bilateral interaction “would set the process in place for a ready and speedy resumption of Six-Party interactions,” Campbell said, adding “the United States respects and shares a similar set of views.”

UNITED STATES WILL NOT DICTATE TO JAPAN’S NEW GOVERNMENT

Clinton held her first meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Okada, and the assistant secretary said the Obama administration has been underscoring the need for the two countries to “get off to a good start” following the formation of the new government headed by the Democratic Party of Japan.

The United States intends to listen to the new government on “how they want to undertake a major review of various aspects of our alliance relations,” Campbell said, including the presence of U.S. Marines on the island of Okinawa. Campbell added that in public, the Obama administration will stress the importance of respecting each other as equals, but in private will “underscore areas where we think continuity in policy is important and also in areas that we’re prepared to have further dialogue.”

“As an alliance partner and a strong friend of Japan, at this early stage, we cannot be in a position to dictate. We must make clear that we’re committed to a process of dialogue and discussion,” he said.

The new Japanese government has said it wants a U.S. Marine Corps unit to leave Okinawa, and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley told reporters in New York September 21 that Okada had conveyed to Clinton that his government wants to pursue the issue with the Obama administration.

In response, Clinton “reflected the view that we have a current plan in terms of the basing of U.S. forces in Japan and some adjustments that are, in fact, already going on, and that we would welcome the opportunity to talk further with the government about that,” Crowley said.