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US, North Korean officials meet in New York
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-07 07:52 The United States met Monday with North Korea on
halting its nuclear weapons program and withdrew a threat to try to punish the
North Koreans soon with U.N. sanctions.
The meeting was requested by North Korea and held in New York, where the two
sides had last met May 13, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
The U.S. aim is to resume six-nation negotiations after a nearly yearlong
impasse. McCormack and other Bush administration officials did not say if the
talks in New York made progress in that direction.
But in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he believed
North Korea wanted to return to the negotiations and resolve an international
standoff over its nuclear weapons program.
"I believe that North Korea really does want somehow to hold six-party talks
and resolve the matter," the Kyodo news agency quoted Koizumi as telling
reporters during a visit to the 2005 World Expo in Aichi.
In the May 13 meeting, U.S. diplomats had urged the North Koreans to return
to the negotiations. "We are hopeful that North Korea will be responding soon,"
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "We continue to urge
North Korea to return to the six-party talks at an early date without
preconditions."
State Department envoy Joseph DiTrani and James Foster, who is in charge of
the department's office of Korean affairs, were the diplomats who met with North
Korean officials. U.S. officials said the North Koreans at the meeting were
Ambassador Pak Gil-Yon and Deputy Ambassador Han Song-Ryol.
In a conciliatory move, meanwhile, US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
said in Bangkok, Thailand, that no deadline had been set to bring the dispute to
the U.N. Security Council.
Rumsfeld's statement nullified one by a senior defense official traveling
with him that there could be a decision on going to the United Nations within
weeks.
The North Korea, meanwhile, has denounced sanctions as tantamount to a
declaration of war.
Rumsfeld said news reports that the United States was setting a deadline on
U.N. action were "incorrect and mischievous."
Word that the two sides had been in touch, at least by telephone, gave way
Monday to the disclosure that new talks had been held in New York. But it did
not soften North Korean rhetoric.
The state-run Korean Central News Agency excoriated the United States in
several commentaries, saying the nuclear standoff cannot be defused "as long as
the U.S. clings only to its anachronistic hostile policy toward the DPRK."
In the meantime, before Rumsfeld stepped in, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice disagreed with the anonymous Pentagon official's statement that action in
the United Nations could be imminent.
"I think the idea that within weeks we are going to decide one way or another
is a little forward-leaning, I would say," Rice told reporters traveling with
her to a meeting of the Organization of American States in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"I don't put timelines on things, and I think the president, he doesn't put
timelines on issues," Rice said.
Last week, at an unannounced meeting in Washington, senior American
negotiator Christopher Hill met with South Korean and Japanese diplomats and
reaffirmed the strategy of using diplomacy to induce North Korea to halt its
nuclear weapons programs.
The talks involve North and South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and
Russia.
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