US nuclear envoy may power up talks

By Zhang Haizhou and Zhang Xin (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-04 08:16

United States nuclear envoy Stephen Bosworth arrived in Beijing Thursday for a two-day visit during which he is expected to talk with Chinese officials on how to re-open the Six-Party Talks, the Foreign Ministry said.

He will meet Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Chinese nuclear envoy Wu Dawei to "exchange views on the Korean Peninsula issue, the Six-Party Talks and other issues of common interest", spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

"We'd like to work with other parties to promote the denuclearization process on the peninsula," she added.

The US envoy's trip coincides with a visit of a delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) led by its Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il.

Experts said Beijing is likely to make use of the opportunity to bridge contacts between the US and the DPRK.

Jiang said that Kim, who's leaving China on the weekend, had already met Wu and "exchanged views on the China-DPRK ties and issues of common interests". Kim was visiting Jiangsu province Thursday.

The US embassy in Beijing said Bosworth would also travel to Seoul and Tokyo as part of an Asian tour amid recent conciliatory moves by Pyongyang.

His visit to the region aims to "continue consultations with our partners and allies on how to best convince North Korea that it must live up to its obligations and take irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization", the embassy said in a statement.

The embassy said it had no information about a possible meeting between Bosworth and Kim.

Zhang Liangui, an expert on the DPRK at the Central Party School in Beijing, said "Bosworth's visit aims to coordinate the parties involved to strictly implement UN Security Council Resolution 1874 and force the DPRK back to the Six-Party Talks."

China would "use the visit to facilitate contact between the US and the DPRK", he said.

But he said the prospects are still "bleak" because the DPRK's conciliatory moves in the last month have been part of efforts to lift the UN sanctions imposed after its nuclear test in May and several missile launches afterwards.

He said the DPRK is not going to give up its nuclear program, which is very much the crux of the issue.

Wang Fan, an expert at China Foreign Affairs University, said the situation is "moving in the right direction", but it's unlikely the Six-Party Talks will reopen soon because Pyongyang has declared them dead.

Wang, however, suggested countries involved should work out some other form of multilateral negotiations as an alternative to the six-nation talks.

Wang Linyang, AP contributed to the story