US, North Korea agree to direct talks

The US and N Korea on Wednesday ended a six-month standoff by agreeing to resume direct talks on security issues, but only after the Bush ad...

The US and N Korea on Wednesday ended a six-month standoff by agreeing to resume direct talks on security issues, but only after the Bush administration made an important concession.

Officials said the two countries will meet in Beijing, probably late next week, for three-way talks with the Chinese. The agreement came after the US administration abandoned its insistence that the talks also include the South Koreans and Japanese.

Instead, US officials said they will press to include the two countries in later rounds of talks, although N Korea has not yet agreed to this. US, South Korean and Japanese officials hailed the planned talks as an important step forward, though the Americans acknowledged that it will not be easy to get Pyongyang to give up the nuclear deterrent it has sought to acquire.

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‘‘We’re not looking for a solution in one meeting of a couple days’ duration,’’ US Secretary of State Colin Powell said. ‘‘We believe this is the beginning of a long, intense process of discussion.’’

Though the outlook is unclear, the fact that talks are scheduled was widely viewed as a breakthrough after a half year of growing tensions and intermittent threats of war. The US-N Korean relationship deteriorated last October after Pyongyang acknowledged that it had violated pledges by carrying on a secret bomb-making programme.

Since then, N Korea has ejected UN weapons inspectors and taken a series of steps suggesting it wanted to begin a weapons programme that could make it a major exporter of nuclear materials.

‘‘The priority is to lift the atmosphere of crisis from the Korean Peninsula,’’ said Yoon Young Kwan, Foreign Minister of South Korea, whose economy has been badly stressed by talk of war. Intensive talks on a meeting have been going on for weeks, but the breakthrough came last week. On Saturday, the N Korean government, in a shift, said it could agree to multilateral talks.

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The US delegation will be led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. Powell said the US delegation is ‘‘placing no conditions on the meeting. We are not afraid of talking.’’ And he emphasised that President Bush ‘‘is looking for a diplomatic solution.’’

He said US officials hope the meeting might be held next week. ‘‘We’ll have to see the reaction we get to news of this arrangement,’’ he said without elaborating. US officials said the Chinese became the third party in talks because the N Koreans, after balking at inclusion of South Korea and Japan, said they would consent to Beijing’s participation.

The Chinese have recently begun working hard to move the North Koreans into talks. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao however declined to confirm US-N Korea talks will be held in Beijing.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun fended off criticism on Seoul’s exclusion from talks on the North’s suspected nuclear arms ambitions. Roh urged detractors to focus on results at next week’s talks in Beijing after media criticised Seoul’s failure to win a seat at the table. ‘‘It is the outcome that must be good,’’ he said at a meeting. US officials have said the US would help North Korea, only after it consented to strict verification. (LAT-WP)