SEOUL, South Korea — A top North Korean nuclear envoy will visit the United States next month for rare bilateral talks, a news report said today, as diplomats pushed to revive negotiations on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Plans call for Kim Kye-Gwan to travel to the U.S. in March, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported from Beijing, citing an unidentified source.
U.S. State Department spokesman Fred Lash said he hadn’t seen the report.
A meeting between the North Korean envoy and U.S. officials would be a strong sign that the push to get the disarmament talks back on track was gaining traction. It also would confirm a warming in relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
Pyongyang, which is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs, walked away from disarmament-for-aid negotiations last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs.
But after tightened sanctions and financial isolation, the impoverished nation has reached out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months.
Earlier, spokesman P.J. Crowley said U.S. officials haven’t ruled out future meetings with the North Koreans, but “we believe firmly that the next meeting that U.S. representatives and others should have with North Korea is through a formal six-party meeting.”
The disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, Russia and host China.
In Beijing, the North Korean nuclear negotiator met for three days this week with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, and they were expected to meet again today.
Kim, the negotiator, on Thursday said they shared a “deep exchange of views … on issues of interest, including China-North Korea relations, signing of a peace treaty and resumption of the six-party talks.”
North Korea wants sanctions eased and a peace treaty with the U.S. formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War if it returns to the talks.
Meanwhile, the U.N. political chief, B. Lynn Pascoe, was in Pyongyang this week. Pascoe, the highest-ranking U.N. diplomat to visit North Korea since 2004, met Thursday with North Korea’s No. 2 official, conveying a message from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, broadcaster APTN reported.
The rush of diplomacy raised hopes of a breakthrough on restarting the negotiations after Kim Jong-Il assured a high-level Chinese envoy Monday that his government is committed to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
