US, North Korea to extend "substantive and serious" talks

By Bill Smith Feb 23, 2012, 11:30 GMT

Beijing - US officials said they held 'substantive and serious' talks with their North Korean counterparts on Thursday and had agreed to extend the dialogue into a second day.

'We are still in the middle of negotiations,' Glyn Davies, the US special envoy for North Korea policy, said following five and a half hours of talks on Thursday.

'The talks today were substantive and serious and covered quite a number of the issues,' Davies told reporters.

Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, who led the North Korean delegation, also said Thursday's talks were 'positive,' South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

Davies declined to give details of the issues discussed, confirming only that US food aid to North Korea 'did come up' during the talks.

The two sides would 'try to wrap up tomorrow,' he said of the talks.

The talks were the first between the two nations since the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in December.

Before the talks, Davies said the United States wanted to use them to 'find out what the new leadership in North Korea is prepared to do' towards fulfilling promises to end its nuclear weapons programme under a 2005 six-nation agreement.

He said US officials hoped to find out if the new North Korean leadership under Kim's son, Kim Jong Un, was 'prepared to pick up where we left off' in two bilateral meetings in New York in July and Geneva in October.

The United States hoped to make progress during the Beijing talks on denuclearization, non-proliferation, and 'humanitarian issues and human rights issues,' Davies said.

'I find it a positive sign that relatively soon after the beginning of the (leadership) transition in North Korea, the DPRK has chosen to get back to the table with us,' he said.

In Pyongyang's first comments on last year's bilateral meetings, a Foreign Ministry spokesman quoted by the state-run Korean Central News Agency last month accused the US of reneging on an offer of more than 300,000 tons of food aid in exchange for North Korea suspending its uranium enrichment.

Davies said North Korean officials wanted to 'get as much grain as they possibly can' from the US.

He said previous talks on food aid had made 'good progress' but that US officials wanted to ensure any aid reached vulnerable groups including children under 5 years of age, pregnant women and elderly people outside North Korea's public food distribution system.

Davies said it was also 'important that North Korea quickly take up again its dialogue with its neighbours in particular South Korea but also with Japan.'

Host nation China is keen to restart negotiations involving North Korea, the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Those talks have been stalled since the end of 2008.

China has publicly supported North Korea's leadership transition to Kim Jong Un.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei on Thursday said dialogue was the 'only way out' of the long-standing impasse over North Korea's nuclear programme.

China wanted to join the other five nations to 'press ahead with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the resumption of the six-party talks,' Hong said.

Davies was also scheduled to meet Wu Dawei, China's top official for North Korean affairs, and planned to leave Beijing on Saturday for talks in Seoul.

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