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Nuke talks continue amid signs of progress
Energy assistance surfaced as an option for power-starved North Korea on Thursday as South Korea outlined an incentive package for Pyongyang if it gives up its contentious nuclear program to end a 16-month stalemate.
South Korea's deputy foreign minister Lee Soo-hyuck said that China and Russia have agreed to help it provide energy aid to North Korea if its nuclear programs are frozen and the government takes steps toward dismantlement. "The U.S. and Japan expressed understanding and support" for the energy aid, Lee said. He didn't say whether they would join in a possible assistance package. Lee also said that Pyongyang's representative, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, made no mention at the second day of talks Thursday about "countermeasures" proposed by Seoul that are believed to include some forms of compensation. "But they have praised our efforts in informal South-North Korea contacts," Lee said. Delegates entered the second day of negotiations stressing that it was too early to predict how they might end. "It's just getting started," Japan's delegate, Mitoji Yabunaka, said before the talks reconvened on Thursday. The morning session ended with no word of what happened, and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said the talks would continue Friday. In Seoul, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said he could not give details of the compensation - or "corresponding measures" - for Pyongyang, but said they could include assistance for the power-starved North's energy sector. "There is an understanding within our side that corresponding measures must at least start with the issue of providing energy assistance," Jeong said in Seoul. He added that such aid could be delivered only after a guarantee that North Korea's freeze would lead to dismantlement. Meanwhile, reports that the United States and North Korea met for a second time Thursday morning could not be confirmed by South Korean officials in both Seoul and Beijing, and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it had no immediate information on any meeting. The second day of meetings among the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States on the nuclear standoff followed a rare, lengthy one-on-one session Wednesday between high-level officials from Washington and Pyongyang - the two key players in the dispute. Neither side gave details of the meeting between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, but the State Department described it as "useful." North Korea and the United States have been at odds over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions for years and especially since October 2002, when Kelly said the North told him it had a secret weapons program based on enriched uranium. During the opening of talks Wednesday in Beijing, Kelly said Pyongyang has nothing to worry about. The United States wants an end to all of the North's nuclear weapons development but has "no intention of invading or attacking" the country, he said. "The United States seeks complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all North Korea's nuclear programs, both plutonium and uranium," Kelly said. All of North Korea's partners in the talks say they want a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula. "No matter how short or long the talks are, the responses certainly won't disappoint," said the state-run Beijing Daily Messenger. And from the Beijing News: "The first day of talks: flexibility, liveliness, patience." |
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