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North Korea nuclear envoy visits China, talks closer

09 February 2010 23:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. North Korea’s top nuclear envoy arrived in Beijing on Tuesday as Pyongyang said it was willing to step up talks with China on resuming stalled disarmament-for-aid talks, APA reports citing Reuters.

The apparent shift by North Korea toward returning to six-party talks came a day after the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, pledged again to remove nuclear weapons from the peninsula.

Kim has made, and broken, similar pledges before, and analysts say it is unlikely he will ever scrap nuclear arms, which are seen at home as the crowning achievement in his military-first rule. But they say the impoverished North is feeling the pressure of U.N. sanctions imposed after its nuclear test last year, as well as a botched currency reform that the South said sparked inflation and rare civil unrest.

Kim Kye-gwan, the North’s top nuclear negotiator, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday.
"Dispatching Kim Kye-gwan indicates that some sort of understanding is being worked out between China and North Korea on restarting the nuclear talks," said Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute think tank near Seoul.

The Chinese statement said Kim had reiterated the North’s "persistent stance to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" during the meeting with Wang. The North has said many times it could end its nuclear arms program if the United States drops what Pyongyang sees as a hostile policy toward it.

In another high-profile visit to the country, U.N. Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe was expected to arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said North Korea was "saying the right things" but noted that this had to be followed up with action on rejoining the six-party talks and recommitting to a stalled disarmament-for-aid deal.

"We think that China and the United States see the current situation with respect to North Korea very similarly, and we would hope that the North Korean delegation will receive a very firm message" in Beijing, Crowley said.