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Thursday, april 24, 2003

Besides the United States and North Korea, China also is participating in the talks, which began earlier Wednesday. Although Chinese officials had earlier said that they are attending only as observers, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said they are "full and equal partners."

The meeting follows six months of intense altercations between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's suspected secret nuclear weapons program with some observers predicting an Iraq-style U.S. military offensive against the communist regime.

After the first of three scheduled days of meetings, in Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who is leading the U.S. delegation, was tight-lipped. But State Department officials in Washington said the best to be expected is an agreement to hold further discussions.

"(The meeting) give(s) people a chance to lay out their views, for us to explain our positions on these issues, for the Chinese to explain theirs, for the North Koreans to explain theirs," spokesman Boucher told a briefing in Washington. "That's what we're looking for out of this," he added.

He said that all three sides would "need to take enough time" to lay out their views.

In the Chinese capital, Beijing, Foreign Ministry officials echoed similar views, saying that they are expecting all sides to ratchet down their tensions. They said that they did not expect any side to make specific commitments at this stage.

Observers say that the Chinese are engaged in a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, they have the United States, which is their largest trading partner. On the other, they have North Korea, an age-old communist ally.

The Americans are being equally careful. When asked if the meeting would lead to the next round of talks, the State Department spokesman said he was not "looking to report progress or ... provide any particular schedule ... give people a chance to talk, to lay out their views."

"I'm not going to try to brief on the substance or characterize the talks or characterize issues that may or may not have come up," he added.

Instead Boucher offered an itinerary of the meetings the U.S. delegation held on Wednesday. Kelly and his delegation had talks with China and North Korea in Beijing on Wednesday. In the morning, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted the U.S. delegation for breakfast. Multilateral talks began later in the morning and went into late afternoon, with all three sides participating and presenting their views. Kelly and his delegation also briefed South Korean and Japanese diplomats in Beijing on Wednesday's meetings.

Wide Disagreement

Diplomatic sources in Washington say that the basic disagreement between the United States and North Korea was so wide that both sides need a cooling-off period before they could move to seeking resolution of their differences.

They said that North Korea is demanding economic assistance and security guarantees from Washington as a precondition for scrapping its alleged nuclear weapons program. The United States, on the other hand, wants Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear program first and then talk of aid and security.

The sources, however, say that the chances for the talks to lead to some tangible results are stronger now than ever before. They say that the U.S. military offensive in Iraq and China's pressure have had a major impact on Pyongyang's attitude, and add it can be encouraged to be more flexible on the issues that irk the United States.

Last year, President George W. Bush labeled North Korea as a member of "the axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq. The remarks elicited an angry response from Pyongyang, and soon after Bush's speech North Korea announced that it was reactivating its nuclear facilities.

Washington, however, disagrees with this assessment saying that North Korea already was working on a nuclear weapons program even before Bush made these remarks in last year's State of the Union address.

North Korea restarted its nuclear facilities in December when it also expelled U.N. inspectors from suspect sites and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Japanese government, which also feels threatened by the North's alleged intention to go nuclear, has urged the United States to go soft in its dealing with the communist regime.

Japanese officials say that recent strong remarks from Washington have made the North Koreans nervous and in the past the North Koreans have tended to react strongly whenever they felt nervous.

On the eve of the talks, Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the Bush administration's hard-liners in warning North Korea that Pyongyang's tough posture would not intimidate Washington and it would do "whatever might be required" to deal with a threat from the North.

But diplomatic observers say that Powell's remarks were rather uncharacteristic and he might have been forced to speak tough by the so-called hawks who accuse him of being "too soft."

Powell, otherwise, is considered a strong advocate of holding direct talks with North Korea for resolving disputes.

As the Japanese had warned, the North Koreans reacted to the toughening of attitude in Washington by ordering their air force to start long-distance flight training, a move aimed at countering the U.S. air tactics used in the war in Iraq.

Last week, North Korea announced that it had started reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon reactor facility north of Pyongyang. This would allow the communist regime to produce enough plutonium for half a dozen nuclear devices.

And on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov warned that North Korea's nuclear program "has been brought to excess and there is a probability that there will be a catastrophic development of events as early as tomorrow."

Asked to comment on Losyukov's remarks, the State Department spokesman said he did not know what the Russian deputy foreign minister was talking about.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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