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N Korea calls nuclear talks with U.S. 'constructive'

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The United States tested North Korea's willingness to negotiate giving up its nuclear arsenal on Thursday in talks that a top North Korean official said had been "constructive."

US special envoy on North Korea Stephen Bosworth and North Korea's first vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan held about four-and-half hours of talks on the first day.

"The atmosphere was good, the meeting was constructive and interesting. We exchanged views on general issues," Kim said during the lunch break on the first day in New York.

Neither side commented as they left at the end of the day however. And the United States has insisted the discussions are just "exploratory."

Washington has stressed the Pyongyang regime must show it is serious about living up to past commitments on nuclear weapons if six decades of hostility is to come to an end.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited the North Korean official to New York after a meeting between nuclear envoys from North and South Korea at an Asian security forum in Bali, Indonesia last week.

The international community is anxious to see North Korea return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, which broke down in late 2008.

North Korea agreed in principle in 2005 to scrap its weapons program, but staged nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

The North's disclosure in November that it had a uranium enrichment plant, adding a new means to produce atomic weapons, has become a complicating factor in the talks the North has held with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner reaffirmed Thursday that the United States wants to see North Korea keep its 2005 promise to give up nuclear weapons.

"Words are not enough," Toner told a Washington briefing. "We need action."

The New York talks are "a chance for us to sound out the North Koreans" and "gauge their seriousness," the spokesman said.

The North highlighted its mistrust of US motives ahead of the talks.

At a U.N. debate on disarmament on Wednesday, the North's U.N. ambassador Sin Son Ho said a proposed U.S. missile defense shield in Europe would spark a "new nuclear arms race" and that the United States had no "moral justifications" to lecture other countries about proliferation.

North Korea's official news agency however said in a commentary Wednesday that an agreement with the United States formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War could become a "first step" to peace on the Korean peninsula and "denuclearization."

Diplomats and experts have warned the North is unlikely to make concessions in the talks.

In a sign of the diplomatic minefield that the United States has been navigating in its dealings with North Korea, an aide accompanying Bosworth was seen carrying a copy of "How Enemies Become Friends," a recent book by Charles Kupchan, a former adviser to president Bill Clinton, into the meeting.

Kupchan champions the cause of U.S. engagement with its enemies in the book.

"The absence of trust on both sides is at this point so significant that a kind of grand bargain (between the U.S. and North Korea) is unlikely -- if only because it wouldn't pass muster with domestic skeptics here in the United States, particularly on Capitol Hill," Kupchan told AFP.

He suggested that interim measures such as North Korea allowing inspections of certain sites or Western powers giving more assistance and economic aid to the impoverished North could help "the confidence building measures broaden into the trust needed to strike a lasting deal."

© 2011 AFP

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

4 Comments
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Usually, when NK says something, there's very little weight or truth to it. So, if they're claiming constructive talks, it actually must have been just an exchange of names and handshakes and nothing much more....

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

@Kwasbish contrary to the Media Reports, reality is that NK enjoys good relations with USA.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

reality is that NK enjoys good relations with USA.

Reality is the USA and North Korea are still at war.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

"N Korea calls nuclear talks with U.S. 'constructive'" = they promised us some rice

0 ( +1 / -1 )

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