IN THE latest effort to revive long-stalled negotiations to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, US special envoy Tom Bosworth arrived in Pyongyang yesterday to see whether talks had any chance of success.
These are the first high-level representations on the nuclear issue by the US in over a year and come after a year of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.
TV footage showed Mr Bosworth’s delegation, including Washington’s lead nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, arriving in Pyongyang from a US military base near Seoul.
North Korea expelled UN nuclear inspectors and carried out an atomic test blast and various missile tests in May, quitting six-nation talks involving both Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and China.
Since then, relations with most of the international community, except for ally China, have been generally chilly, made even more so by UN sanctions that have hit the impoverished regime hard.
However, there have been some more positive signs of late, which could be read that the pain of sanctions is forcing the North back to the negotiating table.
Since August, the North has freed detained American and South Korean citizens and made other gestures, such as inviting Mr Bosworth for direct talks.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton hoped Mr Bosworth could persuade the North Koreans to return to the nuclear talks, and that the North would work for “a new set of relationships with us and with our partners”.
The US tone is noticeably more stick than carrot this time, as patience has been stretched by what some have seen as a year of gamesmanship by North Korea.
A senior official in Washington, speaking anonymously, told news agencies that North Korea would face tough UN sanctions if it does not agree to return to talks.
“At a minimum, I think it will reinforce the intention of the international community to continue . . . UN sanctions resolutions adopted to punish the North for its nuclear test and other provocations,” the official said.
Convincing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear status will not be easy. North Korea says it needs nuclear bombs to balance US forces in South Korea, where they guard the DMZ (demilitarised zone) around the 38th Parallel. It has divided the two Koreas since the ceasefire that ended the Korean War in 1953, although no peace treaty was signed.