North Korea and other countries involved in the six-nation talks on the North's nuclear weapons program may start working-level negotiations on denuclearizing the communist nation should an upcoming round of the talks produce envisioned progress, a ranking South Korean official said Thursday.
"If the countries reach an agreement on early steps of implementing the Sept. 19 joint statement, they will need working-level groups to carry out those plans," the official at the Foreign Ministry told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Sept. 19 statement refers to an agreement signed in a 2005 round of the talks, under which the North agreed to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for economic benefits and security guarantees. The talks also involve South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China.
The prospect of establishing working-level groups within the six-party negotiation framework is not new, but the official's remarks represent the high expectations for an agreement in the next round, set to begin next Thursday.
"I think we would only know how we (the six parties) would form the working groups and how to run them once the negotiations resume" next week, the official said.
The official refused to clarify how many groups would be established to implement the 2005 accord, but said each paragraph of the six-paragraph statement calls for separate actions, and that as many working groups would be required to carry out each task.
Hopes for an agreement in the upcoming round on North Korea's initial steps of denuclearization have been significantly raised despite a continuing financial dispute between the U.S. and North Korea after their top nuclear negotiators held three days of bilateral talks in Berlin last month.
A working-level meeting between the two to discuss the financial issue was held in Beijing earlier this week. The two-day talks ended Wednesday, apparently with no immediate progress.
Seoul officials, however, said the financial issue is unlikely to hinder progress in the nuclear negotiations.
The last round of the nuclear talk was held in Beijing late last year after a 13-month hiatus. But the talks ended with little progress as North Korea refused to discuss the nuclear issue, only demanding the U.S. remove its sanctions on a Macau bank suspected of laundering money for the communist state.
The nuclear dispute erupted late 2002 following a U.S. accusation that North Korea was running a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Seoul, Feb. 1 (Yonhap News)
Working groups to be established following progress in nuclear talks |
