U.S., North Korea discuss relations

U.S. and North Korean officials held talks on Monday aimed at eventually normalizing diplomatic ties as part of an agreement under which Pyongyang has pledged to scrap its nuclear arms programs in exchange for aid.

The talks in New York marked the highest-level such meeting on U.S. soil since communist North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, sent a top envoy to Washington in 2000 in an abortive effort to improve relations.

North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan and his U.S. counterpart, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, held the first of two days of discussions on how to resolve problems between two countries that have been bitter foes since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

President George W. Bush in 2002 labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil." And antipathy to the United States has been a core element of Pyongyang's identity for five decades.

Despite the historic enmity, Kim Kye-gwan's meeting with U.S. nuclear and Korea experts earlier on Monday showed a "sea change in tone and substance" from recent exchanges, said nuclear expert Jim Walsh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who participated.

"Both sides are talking differently and treating each other differently," Walsh said of the unofficial meeting, attended by eight North Koreans and 15 Americans, including Victor Cha, Asia chief of the U.S. National Security Council.

Monday's official session was followed by a working dinner and Tuesday's talks were expected to run all day, a State Department official said in New York. Neither Hill nor Kim Kye-gwan spoke to the media after their meeting.

Earlier in Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack played down expectations of any breakthrough.

"I would expect that it ... would take some time in order for that process to be completed," he told reporters. "It would be a matter of building up trust, it would be a matter of performance and today is just an initial discussion."

"Underlying all of this, North Korea can realize a different kind of relationship with the rest of the world. The pathway is open to them," he said. "There is also another pathway of isolation ... if they do not perform."

Bilateral issues to be discussed include Washington's designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and U.S. trade sanctions against it under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the State Department said.

Washington will seek Pyongyang's assurances that it is committed to following through on an agreement to shut down within 60 days its main nuclear facility and allow inspectors in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil.

The New York meeting is part of the first stage in implementing the February 13 deal reached in Beijing by the Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China after three years of talks punctuated by North Korean's October nuclear test.

Further steps to fully "disable" North Korea's nuclear weapons program will gain the impoverished state an additional 950,000 tons of oil or other forms of aid of equivalent value.

Before the next round of six-party nuclear talks on March 19, North Korea is set to hold discussions with Japan in Hanoi and separate meetings on energy aid, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and regional security.

Wendy Sherman, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea, said Kim Kye-gwan's meeting at the nonprofit Korea Society with experts that included former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, was "positive, cordial, open and fairly expansive."

"That said, at the end of the day this comes down to the negotiations that will go on," she added.

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South Korea to press North on ending nuclear arms

North Korea's chief nuclear envoy looked set on Tuesday to make a rare trip to the United States while South Korea sent a top official to Pyongyang to persuade the North to quickly start scrapping its nuclear arms program.

North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, accompanied by a senior official in charge of relations with the United States, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.

Kyodo said Kim could leave for the United States as early as Wednesday. North Korea has few air links with the outside world and its officials often travel via China.

Reclusive North Korea agreed earlier this month at six-way talks to shut down its main nuclear reactor, the source of its weapons-grade plutonium, in return for energy aid. It separately said it would halt its seven-month boycott of talks with Seoul.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said on Tuesday North Korea needed repeated reassurance that it would not be threatened by force before it would give up its nuclear arms.

"This is a matter of mutual relationships," Roh told a news conference, saying U.S. policy on the North "had not been consistent like South Korea's" and suggesting Pyongyang had reason to be wary of U.S. overtures.

Roh added that until ties between Washington and Pyongyang had improved considerably, it would be futile for the two Koreas' leaders to meet in a summit.

The two Koreas were beginning a four-day meeting in Pyongyang on Tuesday, their first high-level contact in seven months. Seoul officials said family reunions and food aid for the impoverished North would be on the agenda.

"The most important thing to discuss would be how to cooperate between the South and North to swiftly implement the February 13 nuclear agreement," South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said before leaving for Pyongyang:

North Korea's July 2006 missile launches and October 9 nuclear test chilled what had been improving ties between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war more than half a century after their 1950-53 conflict.

Seoul has said it could resume the food aid it suspended after the missile test if it saw progress in the six-way talks on ending Pyongyang's pursuit of atomic weapons.

South Korea was likely to send the first batch of energy aid to Pyongyang if it began shutting down its reactor.

RARE NORTH KOREAN VISIT

Analysts said the North's recent diplomatic actions, coming after the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions in response to its nuclear test, were encouraging but it was best to be cautious until Pyongyang actually delivered on its pledges.

The State Department said on Monday that nuclear envoy Kim might visit San Francisco to meet non-governmental groups and then go to New York for talks with his U.S. counterpart. Such talks are envisaged under the February 13 nuclear agreement.

The agreement, reached four months after Pyongyang stunned the world with its first nuclear test, requires the secretive communist state to allow international nuclear inspections.

The deal also called for a working group on normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations to meet within 30 days. The United States proposed that it meet in New York, where U.S. and North Korean officials sometimes have contact.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said last week he would meet the North Korean government in March to discuss the shutdown of its nuclear arms program and bring it back under U.N. supervision.

(With additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, George Nishiyama in Tokyo and Arshad Mohammed in Washington)

source:http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSEO22152620070227?pageNumber=1