North, South Korea want progress in six-party talks

SEOUL (Reuters) – Delegations from North and South Korea,
meeting in Beijing on Sunday, said they wanted to see
“substantial progress” in this week’s six-party talks aimed at
ending Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The two sides said they also wanted the participants to
come up with a framework for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

South Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon,
Seoul’s envoy to the talks, met his North Korean counterpart,
Kim Kye-gwan, in Beijing ahead of the talks, South Korean media
reported.

“We shared the view that participants in the talks should
produce substantial progress and come up with a framework for
the realisation of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula,” Yonhap
news agency quoted Song as saying in Beijing.

Christopher Hill, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said on his arrival in Beijing
the United States would like to see enough progress this week
to go into another round of talks.

“I wouldn’t expect this to be the last set of negotiations
… we would like to make some measurable progress, progress we
can build on for a subsequent round of negotiations,” he said.

“These are obviously very important negotiations that we
are very much committed to.”

Six-party nuclear talks will start in Beijing on Tuesday
after a 13-month hiatus, with regional powers trying to coax
North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in
exchange for security guarantees and economic aid.

On Sunday, North Korea called for the United States to drop
what Pyongyang sees as a U.S. plan to topple its leadership and
said its pursuit of atomic weapons is based on the belief that
the United States has hostile intentions toward it.

In the days leading up to the talks that include North and
South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States,
Pyongyang has said the discussions could proceed on a firmer
footing if it could normalize diplomatic ties with Washington
and agree to a peace treaty with the United States to replace
the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Analysts said it is typical of North Korea to try and muddy
the waters ahead of a major meeting by bringing up conditions
and charges just before the participants open talks.

North Korea spoke of another condition on Sunday, saying in
an article in its Rodong Sinmun newspaper, it wants an
assurance from Washington that it does not seek to unseat the
North’s leader Kim Jong-il.

Bush administration officials have said the United States
has no hostile intent toward North Korea.

“If the U.S. drops its ambition for a regime change and
opts for peaceful co-existence with the DPRK, the talks can
make successful progress and settle the issue of the
denuclearisation of the peninsula,” North Korea’s official KCNA
news agency quoted the newspaper as saying.

North Korea, whose official name is the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea, also repeated a call it had made earlier to
have the talks not solely focus on its nuclear programs, the
article said.

In March, Pyongyang said it wanted to turn the six-party
talks into a forum to discuss mutual nuclear disarmament where
it is treated as a nuclear power on par with Washington.

Japanese government sources have said Tokyo will press the
issue of North Korea’s abductions of Japanese nationals on the
first day of the six-party talks in Beijing, the Daily Yomiuri
reported.

Analysts say that could upset Pyongyan and snarl the talks.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said at a 2002 summit with
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Pyongyang had
kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train
spies.

Five were repatriated along with their children born in
North Korea and Pyongyang says the other eight are dead.