NKorea's Kim says open to nuclear talks

BEIJING, Sept 18, 2009 (AFP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il Friday told a Chinese envoy that he was willing to engage in bilateral and multilateral talks on his country's controversial nuclear programme, Chinese state media said.

The statement was the latest in a series of recent peace overtures made by the secretive regime in Pyongyang following months of hostility sparked when it stormed out of long-running six-nation disarmament talks in April.

Kim offered the olive branch during a visit to Pyongyang by State Councillor Dai Bingguo of China, North Korea's closest ally and the host of the on-off negotiations on how to end its nuclear drive. The talks began in 2003.

Kim told Dai that Pyongyang "insists on denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula and was "willing to resolve relevant problems via bilateral and multilateral talks", China's state Xinhua news agency reported.

Dai, who arrived in the North Korean capital on Wednesday, delivered a letter from President Hu Jintao during his talks with Kim, which the North's official Korean Central News Agency said unfolded in an "amicable atmosphere".

Xinhua quoted Hu as telling Kim in the letter that Beijing's "consistent goal" was to "realise the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and to safeguard and promote the peace, stability and development of Northeast Asia".

Hu added that China was "ready to spare no effort to work with the DPRK (North Korea) to realise this goal," it said.

North Korea quit the six-party nuclear disarmament talks -- which group the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States -- in April after the United Nations censured its long-range rocket test.

The United Nations imposed tougher sanctions after a nuclear test in May.

But Washington this month said it was prepared to talk directly with Pyongyang in order to bring it back to the talks.

"North Korea appears to be softening its tough stance ahead of bilateral talks with Washington," said Koh Yu-Hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"Kim is indicating that North Korea is ready to go back to the six-party forum if bilateral talks produce good results."

The US offer for talks came amid a flurry of recent conciliatory gestures by North Korea to both Washington and Seoul following months of hostility and sabre-rattling.

It freed two US reporters after ex-president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang, released five detained South Koreans, eased border curbs for visitors from the South and dropped demands for huge pay rises at a Seoul-funded industrial park.

Kim also sent envoys to join mourning for former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung. The delegation held talks with current President Lee Myung-Bak, whom Pyongyang had previously reviled as a "traitor" and US sycophant.

Yet the North also said this month that it was in the final stages of completing uranium enrichment and was building more plutonium-based atomic weapons.

Xinhua quoted China's Hu as writing to Kim that Beijing was "ready to consolidate and develop the relationship between the two countries" as they celebrate 60 years of formal diplomatic relations and look to the future.

Dai, who was accompanied by China's envoy to the six-party talks, Wu Dawei, headed home to Beijing late Friday, KCNA reported.


by Susan Stumme
(c) 2009 AFP