Talks With North Korea Begin April 23
(State Department spokesman discusses North Korea, Iraq, April 21) (590) By Jane Morse Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- Representatives of the United States, China and North Korea will hold talks in Beijing April 23 to 25 on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, says Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman. At the April 21 daily State Department briefing, Boucher said the United States intends "to conduct serious talks on the situation created by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons." The U.S. interagency delegation for those talks has already departed Washington and is on its way to Beijing, he said. The delegation is being headed by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly. Deputy Director General Li Gun from the American Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will head the North Korean delegation, Boucher said, and Director General for Asian Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fu Ying will head the Chinese delegation. "North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a matter of a great concern to the entire international community," Boucher said, "and especially to countries in the region, all of whom are interested in participating directly in the talks. We believe that inclusion of others in multilateral talks -- South Korea and Japan, above all -- would be essential for reaching agreement on substantive issues." Boucher expressed U.S. appreciation for China's efforts "to achieve the international community's shared goal of a peaceful and stable Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons." China, he said, will be an active participant in this "initial discussion" of North Korea's nuclear program. The spokesman said the "broader interests of the international community" would be represented in these talks. But he added: "We'll keep pushing for inclusion [of Japan and South Korea], but at this point I'm not aware of any assurances from the North Korean side. These are initial discussions. We'll see how things evolve." Boucher emphasized that the foremost concern of the United States is to achieve a "verifiable and irreversible end" to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. But he also noted that the United States is not prepared to offer any inducements to North Korea to try to achieve that goal. "The situation created by these nuclear weapons programs has meant that North Korea has lost out on many of the opportunities it could have expected, lost out on the kind of approach that we have been willing to take," the spokesman said. "The issue that we will be addressing is how North Korea can correct that situation, how North Korea can verifiably and irreversibly end its nuclear weapons programs." On Iraq, Boucher reiterated the U.S. call to end U.N. economic sanctions. "In the view of the United States, as the president has said, Iraq is now liberated, and the United Nations should lift sanctions," the spokesman said. The U.N. Security Council, he noted, has "the independent authority to lift sanctions by means of a new resolution whenever it believes it's appropriate to do so. I think each member of the council now has the chance to look at the facts ... and the responsibility to look clearly at the facts on the ground." Now that the regime of Saddam Hussein is gone, "we don't need the sanctions, we don't need the same kind of controls," Boucher said. Iraqis, he said, "need to be put in charge of their resources and allowed to do what they want with them." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
