U.S. and Japanese leaders are expected to discuss the North Korean nuclear standoff during a meeting today in Washington, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Feb. 23).
This will be U.S. President Barack Obama's first White House meeting with a foreign counterpart since taking office last month.
Prime Minister Taro Aso plans to discuss his government's position that it will not provide any assistance to Pyongyang under a 2007 denuclearization deal until North Korea more fully addresses the status of Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Tokyo has dismissed Pyongyang's claim that all victims have died or been returned to Japan (Kyodo News I/Breitbart.com, Feb. 23).
The nuclear talks have been stalled since late 2008 over issues of verifying the regime's atomic holdings and activities. When they resume, the U.S. side would be led by special envoy Stephen Bosworth, the Yonhap News Agency reported today.
Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, is set to manage Washington's position on a range of issues involving North Korea. There was talk that as he intends to keep his law-school dean position at Tufts University in Massachusetts, that State Department envoy to the six-party talks Sung Kim would handle the nuclear negotiations.
However, State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said yesterday that "Ambassador Bosworth is the lead for the United States."
"It will take a little while" for Bosworth to establish his office at the State Department, one agency official said.
Bosworth is not expected to turn his full attention to the job until he has a boss at the agency. Kurt Campbell is expected to be named assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, after which the two men could coordinate activities on North Korea (Yonhap News Agency I, Feb. 24).
Bosworth's job will be much harder than it would have been 10 years ago, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said yesterday.
"My problem was only to keep the North Koreans from building a nuclear arsenal, but he has to get them to give up the small arsenal they already have. It is obviously a much steeper hill," said Perry, author of the 1999 "Perry Process" intended to shutter Pyongyang's WMD activities.
Perry said Washington needs to "press a reset button" in its relations with Pyongyang, Yonhap reported. His statement, made at a conference in Seoul, echoed U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden's recent call for a new take on U.S.-Russian relations (see GSN, Feb. 9).
"To determine how the United States should deal with North Korea will be one of the first major security decisions of President Obama," he said.
The Obama administration should not wait to see how the leadership situation in Pyongyang develops given reports of leader Kim Jong Il's poor health, Perry said. "He might be in office for many more years. In the meantime, the danger of North Korean threats will continue to increase," he added.
Washington, in collaboration with Japan and South Korea, must develop "a strategy that offers incentives to North Korea for giving up its nuclear weapons, as well as an explicit, serious cost if they choose to continue it," Perry said.
Obama "must deal with the North Korean government as it is -- not as he would wish it to be," he said (Yonhap News Agency II, Feb. 24).
Meanwhile, a team of U.S. experts left China today for a trip to North Korea that could include talks on the nuclear situation and a visit to the Yongbyon nuclear complex, Kyodo reported.
Stanford University academics John Lewis and Siegfried Hecker, who have both made multiple trips to Pyongyang, are among the team members (Kyodo News/Breitbart.com, Feb. 24).
Elsewhere, the foreign ministers of China and South Korea today planned talks on the nuclear standoff, Agence France-Presse reported.
"Together with the Chinese, we will have a brainstorming session on the North's nuclear and missile issues," South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said before flying to Beijing (see related GSN story, today). "We also need to discuss ways to bring forward the six-party talks" (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Feb. 24).