A U.S. organization is urging the Obama administration to move quickly to establish direct talks with North Korea over that nation's nuclear program, the Yonhap News Agency reported today (see GSN, Nov. 20).
"During the first 100 days of the new administration, the president should send a special presidential envoy to Pyongyang to deliver a simple message," the Center for American Progress Action Fund said in Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President. The group is headed by John Podesta, who is also leading President-elect Barack Obama's transition team.
"The envoy should make it clear that the efforts of the Bush administration in 2008 to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program through the so-called six-party process involving all of North Korea's neighbors, as well as the direct bilateral talks the outgoing administration finally engaged in, are still on track," the group said.
Obama has said his administration was open to direct talks with North Korea, and that lower-level diplomacy could lead to a meeting between the two nations' leaders.
The U.S. envoy should make it clear that "direct, high-level bilateral talks between the two governments is a modus operandi acceptable to the new administration," the book says. The other nations participating in the diplomatic effort -- China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- must remain closely involved in the process even if bilateral talks move ahead, the center said (Yonhap News Agency I, Nov. 21).
A high-level South Korean lawmaker said observers should not expect Obama and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to meet in the near future, Yonhap reported today.
"It is wrong for us to assume that Obama will run to Pyongyang just because he talked about direct diplomacy with North Korea," said Representative Park Jin.
"We anticipate that Obama will be cautious," he said. "Obama's North Korea policy will likely differ from the first term Bush administration, but will be almost the same as the second Bush administration."
President George W. Bush included the Stalinist state in the "axis of evil" during his first term, but in later years allowed for bilateral meetings between U.S. and North Korean officials in hopes of furthering the denuclearization agenda.
After years of talks, Pyongyang in 2007 agreed to give up its nuclear program in exchange for economic, diplomatic and security benefits from the other nations. North Korea has since moved to meet its nuclear dismantlement obligations, though the process has not proved particularly smooth. The latest obstacle has been the regime's claim that it did not agree to allow collection of nuclear samples as part of a program to verify the scope of its atomic activities (Yonhap News Agency II, Nov. 21).
Japan and South Korea yesterday agreed to press the verification issue, Agence France-Presse reported.
"North Korea should issue a solid document to verify the framework of its denuclearization under the six-way talks," Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said after meeting with Seoul's top foreign official, Yu Myung-hwan, in Peru.
Yu "told me that he completely shares the view and said, 'Let's work together on this point heading into the next talks,'" Nakasone said.
The six nations have not yet scheduled their next full round of talks, which are expected to focus on the verification issue (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 21).