NORTH KOREA: The North Korean leader, Mr Kim Jong-il, agreed that his country would join a first round of six-party working-level talks on his nuclear programmes on May 12th after a visit to China this month, media and officials said yesterday.
The lower-level talks to focus on detail rather than strategy would be the first concrete result of two rounds of high-level talks involving China, Russia, the two Koreas, the United States and Japan in Beijing in the past year on North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.
The breakthrough came when the reclusive Mr Kim made a rare visit to Beijing this month and met President Hu Jintao to set the date, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
The visit came just days after a visit to Beijing by the US Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, who brought more evidence of North Korea's efforts to develop a nuclear force.
"There is no period set, there are no specific topics fixed," South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister, Mr Lee Soo-hyuck, told reporters.
The nuclear crisis arose in October 2002 when, US officials say, North Korea disclosed it was working on a secret programme to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement.
North Korea said it expected to discuss a reward for freezing its nuclear plans, but any breakthrough depended on Washington.
"The DPRK side will attend this meeting to discuss the proposal 'reward for freeze'," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The two protagonists to the talks are at odds on many issues, including how to proceed on a US offer to provide security assurances if North Korea agrees to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear arms programmes.
"Everything will depend on the US attitude," the North's Foreign Ministry said. "The US attempt to while away time, insisting on its wrong assertion, would not do it good, either.
"The DPRK is by no means impatient."
China, host of the six-party talks, and Russia said they hoped the working-group meeting would be a success.
"We hope all parties can make efforts to make the meeting work," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Kong Quan, told a news conference in Beijing, confirming the May 12th date.
The talks were expected to last about five days, Kyodo said.
• South Korea's Red Cross said yesterday it would send a second batch of aid supplies by air to North Korea today to help victims of last week's train blast.
At least 161 people were killed and 1,300 injured in the catastrophic explosion on April 22nd.
The official KCNA news agency said the blast had the force of 100 one-tonne bombs and caused huge damage in a 4km radius in the town of Ryongchon on the Chinese border.
- (Reuters)