A small group of U.S. experts on North Korea was expected Saturday to begin several days in meetings with officials in Pyongyang, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 20).
The talks come ahead of U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth's trip on Dec. 8 to Pyongyang, where he is likely to press the regime to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program. It has been nearly a year since the last round of full negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and both Koreas; since then, Pyongyang has conducted its second nuclear test and declared resumption of plutonium reprocessing.
Korea Economic Institute President Charles Pritchard, institute Academic Affairs and Research Director Nicole Finnemann and the Asia Foundation senior associate Scott Snyder are expected to remain in the North Korean capital until tomorrow, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
"Their trip to North Korea is being made after consultations with the U.S. government," said a diplomatic source. "They are likely to meet with key North Korean officials concerned with the U.S. and the country's nuclear weapons program.
The experts are expected to discuss the trip with U.S. officials after returning to the United States, according to the source (Agence France-Presse/Google News, Nov. 21).
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday urged Pyongyang to return to multilateral negotiations, Yonhap reported.
"We are going to go with a very clear message that there are significant benefits to North Korea if they recommit to the verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Clinton told Bloomberg Radio in a reference to Bosworth's forthcoming trip.
She said that Washington "would explore some of the issues which they have raised continually with us over the years; namely, normalization of relations, a peace treaty instead of an armistice, economic development assistance.
"All of that would be open for discussion," Clinton said of the package of concessions previously agreed to by all six-negotiating nations in 2005.
The Obama administration hopes that Bosworth's trip will be followed by a return to the six-nation talks, said an official.
"There are certainly indications that [North Korea] will return to the six-party talks. We have been told directly as far as I know," according to the official, who said that he could not provide any more concrete details (Hwang Doo-hyong, Yonhap News Agency, Nov. 20).