Report: Obama to send top diplomat to North Korea for nuclear talks

Nov 10, 2009, 4:28 GMT

   Washington - US President Barack Obama is to send a top diplomat to North Korea for discussions aimed at resuming international disarmament talks with Pyongyang, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

   The report comes as warships belonging to North and South Korea clashed off their west coast, and shortly before Obama begins a four-nation tour of Asia later this week.

   The diplomat in question is Stephen W Bosworth, Obama's special representative for North Korea, and the decision to send him to re-engage Pyongyang in nuclear talks was made last week, the Post reported.

   No date has been set for the visit, but it will likely take place before the end of the year, and comes at the request of the increasingly isolated North Korean regime, the report said.

   The talks would be the first direct meeting between US and North Korean officials in more than one year.

   North Korea twice conducted nuclear weapons tests in recent years and six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang have stalled.

   Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States would never establish normalized relations with North Korea as long as the Stalinist state has nuclear weapons.

   'Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization,' Clinton said. 'Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea.'

   The latest round of six-nation talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear programme - involving the US, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and North Korea - were held in December.

   North Korea pulled out of the talks in April, following international censure of a long-range missile test.