China officially announced Monday that long-stalled six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program will resume in Beijing on Dec. 18 after a 13-month hiatus.
In a statement posted on its Web site, China's Foreign Ministry said, "The parties concerned decided through consultation that the second session of the fifth round of six-party talks will start in Beijing on December 18."
South Korean officials said the talks will be open-ended but expected the upcoming round to finish before Christmas and resume as early as next month.
The Chinese announcement followed weeks of intense diplomacy that involved all concerned parties -- the two Koreas, the U.S., host China, Japan and Russia.
It will be the first six-nation meeting since North Korea conducted its first nuclear bomb test on Oct. 9, drawing stringent U.N. sanctions against it.
The meeting also comes amid a new political environment in the U.S. where President George W. Bush's Republicans lost control over the Congress in mid-term elections. Bush is under increasing pressure to talk directly with North Korea for the resolution of the nuclear entanglement.
South Korea welcomed the resumption of the dialogue.
"The government expects substantial progress to be made through the forthcoming talks for the resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, and will continue close cooperation with related countries to that end," Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said in a brief statement.
The four-year-old nuclear dialogue has been suspended since November 2005 when North Korea pulled out in protest of U.S. financial sanctions imposed over its alleged money laundering, drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
The breakthrough came in late October when the chief U.S. nuclear envoy, Christopher Hill, had an unannounced meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, in Beijing and agreed to restart the talks soon.
They met in the Chinese capital again two weeks ago and held marathon talks over the terms of resuming the six-party talks.
Details of exchanges made at the Hill-Kim meeting were unknown but various sources in Seoul, Washington and elsewhere said the U.S. asked North Korea to make some initial moves to give up its nuclear ambitions to pick up an "early harvest."
Hill specifically asked North Korea to suspend the operation of its main nuclear complex in Youngbyon and re-allow in U.N. nuclear inspectors it expelled in early 2003 at the height of the nuclear tension, the sources said.
Pyongyang was also urged to declare all of its key nuclear-related programs and shut down the underground site of its Oct. 9 nuclear test, they said.
In response, Kim was cited by the sources as saying his government would study the U.S. proposal. It was not unknown whether the North has already responded through diplomatic and other channels.
China, which has hosted four previous rounds, called the upcoming round the "second stage of the fifth round of the six-way talks," as the fourth session recessed due to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.
South Korean officials said their delegation will leave for Beijing on Saturday for a series of bilateral and multilateral preparatory contacts before the main session.
"The only thing I know is that the North Koreans will come to take a test, but I don't know what answer they will bring with them," a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said, requesting anonymity.
Seoul/Beijing, Dec. 11 (Yonhap News)
Talks on N. Korean nuclear issue to reopen next week |
