North Korea said today that it understands the need to resume stalled international talks on ending its nuclear programs, and has agreed to work with the United States to narrow unspecified "remaining differences."
The statement from North Korea's Foreign Ministry was the first reaction from the communist nation to three days of high-level talks with US President Barack Obama's special envoy. Upon returning from North Korea yesterday, envoy Mr Stephen Bosworth said in Seoul that the two sides reached common understandings on the need to restart the nuclear talks.
Though North Korea stopped short of making a firm commitment to return to the negotiating table, its reaction appears to be positive and raises hope that the stalled disarmament process could resume.
North Korea said in the statement that the meetings with the US "deepened the mutual understanding, narrowed their differences and found not a few common points."
The two sides "also reached a series of common understandings of the need to resume the six-party talks and the importance of implementing" a 2005 disarmament pact, the North said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"Both sides agreed to continue to cooperate with each other in the future to narrow down the remaining differences," the statement said, without elaborating what the remaining differences are.
The 2005 pact - negotiated in the on-again-off-again talks involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, the US, and Russia - calls for North Korea to end its nuclear programs in exchange for economic aid, security assurances and diplomatic recognition.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters that for a "preliminary meeting, it was quite positive."
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley urged North Korea to make a firm commitment to return to the negotiating table.
"They have to make the fundamental decision, and we did not leave the meeting today believing that they had crossed the threshold that we want to see them cross," he told reporters. "We want to see them come back to the six-party process."
Mr Crowley suggested that more talks are possible. "We await more information from North Korea as to whether and how they will proceed to come back to the six-party process. Whether that means a phone call or another meeting, we'll wait and see," he said.
North Korea walked out of the talks earlier this year in anger over international criticism of its ambitions to develop rocket technology that could be used one day to send a long-range missile hurling across the Pacific.
Weeks later, it conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a series of ballistic missiles and restarted its nuclear facilities. The defiance earned widespread condemnation and tighter UN sanctions. North Korea called it an issue between itself and the US. and demanded bilateral talks.
Mr Bosworth's trip marked the Obama administration's first high-level talks with North Korea.
He met with First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju - senior foreign policy advisor to leader Kim Jong Il - as well as North Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. The visit did not include a meeting with the North Korean leader.
North Korea said the two sides "had a long exhaustive and candid discussion on wide-ranging issues" including denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, forging a peace treaty, improving bilateral relations and economic and energy assistance.
North Korea has long sought diplomatic relations with the US, which fought for South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War. Washington still has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, which technically remains at war with the North because they signed a truce, not a peace treaty, to end the fighting.
North Korea routinely accuses the US of plotting to attack, and says it needs a nuclear arsenal to defend itself. The US denies planning to invade the North.
Analysts said it was too early to call Bosworth's mission a success. Lee Sang-hyun of the Sejong Institute, a private security think tank outside Seoul, predicted a "tug of war" over when North Korea should rejoin the talks.
"North Korea will only return to the talks after the US offers it a face-saving move or substantial rewards," he said.
AP