Agence France-Presse,
Washington: The United States and North Korea have begun direct talks for the first time since the Stalinist state's pledge two weeks ago to abandon its nuclear weapons program, a top US envoy said Tuesday.
Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator to the Beijing-hosted multilateral meeting aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons network, said that the bilateral talks were held between his staff and officials from North Korea's UN mission in New York.
The talks came ahead of Hill's much-speculated trip to North Korea to push through with international efforts prodding North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees, energy aid and normalization of relations.
“We have had contacts through the New York channel,” Hill, the chief US diplomat for East Asia, said Tuesday, without specifying when or how many round of the talks were held.
This is the first time the United States had announced it had held direct meetings with North Korea since the hardline communist regime agreed to give up its nuclear program at the end of the fourth round of the six-party talks in Beijing on September 19.
The two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
On his trip to Pyongyang, which Hill has hinted since his return from Beijing, the senior diplomat said he had “not finalized my travel plans yet.”
He had indicated earlier that the trip to the North Korean capital — the first in three years by a top US official — would take place before the fifth round of nuclear talks in early November.
Ahead of the next round of talks, “I would look forward to an intensified diplomatic calendar and hope to have US-DPRK contacts,” Hill said.
The last time a US official visited Pyongyang was in October 2002 when Hill's predecessor, then-Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, accused the North of hiding a program for enriching uranium, triggering the current nuclear crisis.
The North responded to the accusation by throwing out weapons inspectors and leaving the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In February this year North Korea admitted having built nuclear weapons.
Although North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear arms in return for a range of incentives under the six-party accord, it insisted that any dismantlement would only begin after it received light-water reactors from the United States to allow it to generate power under a civilian atomic scheme.
The United States maintains however that any discussions on a peaceful nuclear program for North Korea can take place only after Pyongyang disbands its nuclear weapons arsenal.
As for other benefits, such as normalization of relations with the United States and energy aid, Hill indicated that North Korea would simultaneously receive them while it dismantles its nuclear program.
The “sequencing of various obligations” of North Korea and the other parties under the accord reached two weeks ago would be discussed in Beijing next month, Hill said, adding that the talks were going to be “tough.”
“The urgent issue, the number one issue is denuclearization and so, we certainly need the DPRK (North Korea) to be denuclearizing. We understand we also have undertakings as well and in the course of the implementation and as we negotiate through the timing of the sequencing and time flow of this, we will fulfill our obligations,” he said.
“I am prepared to say that all of our undertakings, we will definitely undertake,” he added.
