Bosworth aims to bring Pyongyang back to six-party talks
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Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special envoy for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), aims to bring Pyongyang back to the stalled six-party talks in his visit which began Tuesday, said a U.S. State Department spokesman.
Spokesman Philip Crowley said in a Washington briefing Tuesday that Bosworth's visit aims to see if the DPRK "is prepared to return to six-party talks and to reaffirm their commitments under the 2005 joint communique."
Bosworth arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday afternoon, and was hurried away for meetings, without talking to reporters.
Crowley said Bosworth would have "high-level, authoritative interactions" with DPRK officials, and the primary meetings would occur Wednesday. But he said the envoy is not in place to send out "play by play" reports on Tuesday, and he is unsure who he has already met.
It is reported Bosworth would meet with Kang Sok-ju, the DPRK's first vice foreign minister. Crowley said he would not expect to have communication with Bosworth until he returns to Seoul on Thursday. He is scheduled to brief the Seoul government on the result of the trip, and fly to Beijing on Friday. He will head back to Washington on Dec. 15 after visiting Tokyo and Moscow.
The DPRK shut down Yongbyon nuclear facilities in 2007 under a six-party talk deal. However, the talks were then deadlocked over U.N. sanctions for the DPRK's missile and nuclear tests. In April, Pyongyang quit the six-party talks and announced it was resuming the reprocessing of plutonium from spent fuel rods at the reactor there.
The DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test in May and declared it was in the final phase of an experimental, highly enriched uranium program -- another way to make an atomic bomb.
However, tensions began to thaw recently, and the DPRK has expressed willingness to return to the six-party talks involving itself, the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia, if it has satisfactory talks with Washington.
Peace treaty
Crowley also said a peace treaty should be discussed within the six-nation framework.
"On the issue of a peace treaty, obviously the United States is not the only party to that peace treaty. That would have to be done in a multilateral context."
"We will make clear to them that -- should they return to the six-party process, and should they reaffirm their commitments under the 2005 joint communique, then there is available to them a robust channel for bilateral dialogue, with which we can discuss a wide range of issues," he said.
The spokesman said the United States could help Pyongyang back to the international community. "We can see and can look at how we could help...end its isolation and have the kinds of normal relationships that we and others have with countries around the world," he said.
Bosworth's meetings in Pyongyang would be the first bilateral meeting between the two sides since U.S. President Barack Obama took office in January. DPRK nuclear envoy Ri Gun visited the United States in October and met in New York and in California with Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy to disarmament talks. However, Ri was attending a meeting held by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP) at that time, and the U.S. government didn't confirm those meetings as bilateral talks.
