S.Korea pushing pace to resume North nuclear talks

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s new chief nuclear envoy
will soon travel to countries involved in talks on ending the
North’s atomic programmes in an intensifying effort to restart
negotiations, its foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Ban Ki-moon told reporters Deputy Foreign Minister Chun
Yung-woo’s travel would probably help set the stage for the
talks, stalled since November because of a U.S.-North Korea
dispute following Washington’s crackdown on firms suspected of
aiding illicit North Korean financial activities.

Another South Korean official said there may be fresh
momentum between the United States and North Korea to return to
the talks, while the top U.S. negotiator pressed China and
others to do more to bring the North Koreans back to the table.

China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States
are involved in the talks.

The United States has cracked down on firms suspected of
aiding North Korea in counterfeiting U.S. dollars, money
laundering and drug trafficking it says help to fund the
North’s nuclear programmes.

North Korea has denied being involved in such activities
and said it would be unreasonable to continue the talks as long
as Washington imposes sanctions aimed at toppling its
leadership.

“We expect the overall picture for the six-party talks will
surface through the chief envoy’s visit to related countries
for close consultations,” Ban said.

But he said it was difficult to predict when the talks
would resume, even if “all the countries involved in the talks
hope for a speedy resumption.” An unnamed South Korean official
said on Tuesday the six countries involved in the negotiations
were discussing possibly resuming the talks in late March or
early April.

There have been bilateral contacts among North Korea, China
and the United States which might unlock the standoff and pave
the way for a new round of the nuclear talks, the official
said.

The countries have failed to move forward since agreeing in
September to a set of principles that could eventually see the
North give up its nuclear programmes and receive aid and a
promise of better diplomatic ties with Washington and Tokyo.

That has been the only substantive product of five rounds
and seven cumbersome sessions of talks in more than two years.
Often the countries have seemed to outsiders to exert more
effort on agreeing to meet than on negotiating a deal that
works. “We think everybody should try to do more,” the top U.S.
envoy to the talks, Christopher Hill, was quoted as saying in
the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday. “We cannot have a
situation where North Korea is left to develop nuclear
weapons.”

Hill said China needed to make sure it left no option
untried in trying to coax the North back to the table.

South Korea has said there were signs the North may be
positioning itself to return to the talks.

“It is our assessment that the United States and North
Korea are gradually moving toward resuming the six-party
talks,” Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok told a South Korean
radio programme.

North Korea has shown signs of easing its condition for
resuming the talks, Lee said. “But it’s hard to say
conclusively in what form the North will talk about it and what
it will do.”