North Korea has agreed to return to talks on its nuclear programme and they could start within one month, the United States announced on Tuesday, just weeks after the regime stunned the world with an atomic test.
Christopher Hill, Washington’s chief negotiator on North Korea, announced the sudden breakthrough after secret talks Tuesday in Beijing with his Chinese and North Korean counterparts.
He said the six-nation talks were likely to resume as early as November and that North Korea, one of the most impoverished and isolated countries in the world, had set no conditions for the resumption.
”We believe it will be either this coming month, November, [or] possibly December,” Hill told reporters when asked when the talks would restart.
In a statement posted on its website, the Chinese foreign ministry said the chief delegates to the talks from China, North Korea and the US had met in Beijing and agreed the negotiations should restart.
”On October 31, at China’s initiative, the Chinese, North Korean and US chief delegates to the six-party talks met unofficially in Beijing,” it said.
”The three parties engaged in a frank and deep exchange of views on continuing the six-party talks. The three parties agreed to carry out the six-party talks in the near future, at the six parties’ convenience.”
The breakthrough comes just over three weeks after Stalinist North Korea carried out its first nuclear weapons test, sparking global condemnation and sweeping United Nations sanctions.
The six-party talks — hosted by China and which also involve Japan, South Korea and Russia — began in 2003 with the intent of convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.
However North Korea pulled out of the talks in November last year in protest at US financial sanctions imposed against it over allegations of counterfeiting and money laundering by Pyongyang.
Restarting the talks immediately and without conditions was a key demand of a UN Security Council resolution imposed against North Korea following its October 9 nuclear weapons test.
China and the United States have been working feverishly to see the talks restart.
However the meeting between Hill, North Korea’s envoy to the talks, Kim Kye-Gwan, and Chinese envoy Wu Dawei had not been made public before the announcement on Tuesday evening.
North Korea had insisted for almost a year that it would not return to the talks until the United States lifted the financial sanctions.
However, after a meeting between a special envoy sent by Chinese President Hu Jintao, Tang Jiaxuan, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il on October 19 in Pyongyang, China hinted that North Korea may have become more flexible on its position.
The long hiatus in the talks and the subsequent atomic test came after North Korea agreed at a round of the negotiations on September 19 last year to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for pledges of aid and security.
In that agreement, North Korea said it would renounce all nuclear weapons and programs, return to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty and allow UN weapons inspectors back into the country.
The other nations involved agreed in return to ”respect” the North’s demand for peaceful nuclear energy and said Pyongyang’s request to have a light-water nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes would be revisited ”at an appropriate time”. – Sapa-AFP